


Afterimage

by paleogymnast



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:18:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paleogymnast/pseuds/paleogymnast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you had it to do over again, and you could change everything, would you?" When all appears lost, Dean Winchester—battered, weary, guilty, and alone—is given the opportunity to travel back in time and live his life over again with the promise that if he makes the one choice he was too afraid to make before, he will be able to change the future, and avoid the loss of everyone he ever loved and everything he fought for. But how? After all, he knows time can’t be changed… But with the help of a mysterious entity, who may or may not be the actual God of Time, Dean discovers time can be rewritten.<br/>Armed only with the ghosts of memories from his former life—afterimages of rewritten time—but not really understanding the gift he’s been given, the new Dean, an impossibly young 27-year-old hunter, once again turns to his estranged brother when their father goes missing. But when he takes a chance on forbidden love, will it be the key to saving the universe and averting the apocalypse, or will it only bring about the end even faster?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterimage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [2015 SPN-J2-BigBang](http://www.spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com). Many thanks to [Wendy](http://www.wendy.livejournal.com) the intrepid bigbang mod. 
> 
> Thank you to my lovely artist, [Slytheringurrl](http://slytheringurrl.livejournal.com), for the lovely cover art. it is beautiful and you should really go comment on it at her art journal, [motspeinture](http://motspeinture.livejournal.com/4119.html) (scroll to the bottom for the art for this fic) or go directly to the art [here](http://killthespecter.co.vu/post/125950250436/afterimage-by-paleogymnast-spn-j2-big-bang-2015).
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you also to Carlos for the beta, feedback, and all your help and support on this big bang entry. My editing process was severely curtailed by real life issues, and Carlos had to put up with my crazy schedule and complete lack of any adherence to deadlines or projected completion dates, so thank you, thank you, thank you. I could not have gotten this posted without you.

**Afterimage**   


“If you had it to do over again, and you could change everything, would you?” Kronos asked.

Dean looked at him for a moment, staring up through blood and tears. “What do you mean by _everything_?” he asked.

“Destiny, fate, war, death, life.” Kronos spread his hand to the side, miniscule twinkling stars trailing in its wake. 

Dean blinked and their surroundings were changed. Rather than the dark, deserted field beside a wooded stream on the forgotten end of nowhere they were somehow on a great cliff perched above the swirl of stars looking down on the cloud-covered planet Earth, hanging like a jewel in an endless sea of stars. 

“If you could go back and forge a new story, fight different battles, would you?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Dean managed to stammer out around his swollen jaw and the pounding in his temples. “I thought you couldn’t change anything with time travel. I thought that was one of the fundamental rules. You gonna tell me you can do differently? Or were the dick angels lying about that too?” He wouldn’t put it past them, but then again, he’d time traveled several times now, and it was always the same. No changing anything. Everything that happened always happened. Dean straightened up and glared at Kronos with as much defiance as he could manage. “How do I know you’re not trying to trick me into going back and living through it all over again?”

“It’s true that you can’t change time,” Kronos began.

Dean started to stagger to his feet, but stopped when Kronos motioned for him to stop, he did. 

“No one can _change_ , time, not even me. But time can be overwritten.”

“Overwritten?” Dean asked.

“I know, it sounds like a cheat or a distinction without meaning, but I assure you, it is important. Consider it one of the perks of being me... I _am_ the God of Time, after all. Give me some credit. Unlike your feathered friends who have managed to ineffectually muck about in time, I actually know what I’m doing,” Kronos monologued.

“Well?” Dean asked, growing increasingly impatient.

“Think of it like... a video tape, or one of your computer hard drives.

“You humans and angels and your demon brethren, you can all be so _exactingly_ literal,” Kronos complained. “Mention a ‘choice’ or a ‘decision,’ and the lot of you jump right to the conclusion what you had for lunch—soup instead of a sandwich on some random Tuesday in your youth—or waiting an extra five second before leaving to catch the bus, somehow determined the course of your life. Give you another chance, and it’s all ‘the fate of the world balances on a slice of buttered bread…’”

Dean’s concentration began to waver in and out, his attention floating away on the breeze, leaving his body, this impossible precipice as surely as the blood was flowing from his body and soaking into the ground, drop, by drop, by drop…

“That sort of fate is possible, but so very rare. What never ceases to amaze me is how you all miss the opportunities that are given to you because you fail to realize the kind of ‘choice’ that determines the path of one’s life, is so often a decision made again and again, every moment of every day. Take your brother’s decision to go to Stanford—”

Dean’s concentration snapped back with all the grace and comfort of a broken rubber band.

“Do you think that was accomplished in a single moment? No, every millisecond Sam spent filling out applications, every time he chose to sneak time with a guidance counselor, every signature he forged on his scholarship applications, the bus ticket he bought, every day he stayed instead of going home, every time you didn’t call, every heartbeat you stayed away… a billion billion opportunities to effect a different result, had to be rejected to achieve that result. The big decisions—what to be, where go, who to allow yourself to love—are all like that, and that’s good news. Because it means you have so many chances to change your mind, reach a different result, live a different story.”

“Are you telling me I need to go back and stop Sam from going to Stanford?”

Kronos’ face changed then, mouth spreading into something that had to be a smile, yet seemed so melancholy, Dean half-hoped he was interpreting it wrong. “I hardly think that denying your dear brother the achievement of earning a degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the country would have been the key to averting the apocalypse.”

“Then what are you saying?” Dean demanded. “And why should I even believe you? If what you say is true, if the angels have got it all wrong, if you really can write over my life, how do I know you’re not just going to fuck me over when the next guy comes along? When giving some other sucker a chance at a different life means mine goes to hell? Because if you send me back, if I do things differently that’s hundreds, maybe thousands of people whose lives go differently. You’re talking about affecting the life and death of hundreds, maybe thousands of people.”

“Millions, actually.”

Dean sighed. “Then what’s going to stop my do-over from being derailed by the next schmuck you feed this Kool-Aid?”

“A lifetime of living a legend and still you do not understand.” Kronos regarded Dean. “Less than one soul in ten billion would ever warrant an opportunity such as this. There will be no other in your lifetime. The _gift_ I give you has the potential to rewrite the universe, but the _choice_ of how and what to do will be yours and yours alone.”

“Spoken like every other—”

“This isn’t a deal, Dean. I am not Lilith or Crowley or any other child of Lucifer. I am not taking something for myself. All I ask is the opportunity to show you what it means to be the god of time.”

“Yes,” Dean said, the word slipping from his lips against his better judgment. He’d lost everything. Fought and died and bled and watched as everything he loved was taken from him, the world hollowed out and broken, literally and figuratively. If there was a way to undo the damage, restore life and light to the wasteland before him, then it was worth it, no matter the personal toll. And if maybe, just maybe, he got to save Sammy for real this time, well, maybe he’d take a chance he never had the first time around.

~~~

**March 2006—Oasis Plains, Oklahoma**

“I don’t get it,” Sam said as he flung himself into one of the oversized chairs in the model home’s living room. 

“Don’t get what?” Dean said, letting his attention wander. A bird swooped through the air outside the window. Crazy bug-possessed neighborhood or not, Dean was starting to think some fresh air would do him good. He could get in some more research, find some—space—to get his head in order, maybe figure out another way they could look for Dad… something to make Sam shut up and stop nagging him. A snippet of conversation, disembodied and distorted, floated by on the breeze and his memory flashed unbidden to the awkward barbeque cum open house.

He suppressed a shudder. Well, as long as he could avoid the nosy neighbors, he’d be okay.

“Why you reacted like that,” Sam answered.

Dean rolled his eyes, typical Sam. He walked towards the bathroom, absent-mindedly thinking of trying out the fabulous steam shower the real estate agent had so effusively talked up. “Like what?” Dean answered at last.

“That whole mini-homosexual freak-out at the barbeque, Dean. So what if they thought we were a couple? It was a good cover. They’re less likely to scrutinize us, poke holes in our cover if they’re tripping all over themselves trying to be inclusive and not offend us. I just don’t get why it offended you so much.”

Yeah, now was definitely a good time for a shower. Dean’s feet were all the way across the room and down the hall, hand on the shower door before he was even aware he’d made a decision.

“Dean?” Sam called after him, sounding pissed.

“I think I’m gonna check out the steam shower. Get some of the dirt off,” Dean muttered, not really hearing himself.

“Come on, Dean, just answer the question. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why you turned into some kind of a homophobic—”

_Thunk._

The sound of Sam’s diatribe was cut off by the slamming of the door to the bathroom. Panicked, Dean locked the door, turned on the fan, and cranked on the shower before he could calm down enough to breathe. He’d been avoiding this confrontation with Sam for months. Ever since he’d seen Sam with Jess… then supported him through losing her… Dean had been walking on eggshells waiting for the other shoe to drop. He wasn’t very happy about it, but if Sam thought he was some homophobic douche, well—He gave himself a mental shake—it sure as hell beat the alternative.

The fan was loud and the shower was warm and soothing, combined with the sturdiness of the door, the bathroom effectively blocked out anything Sam might have said. If he’d decided to start banging on the door it certainly would have carried, but (as Dean grudgingly acknowledged) at least Sam hadn’t progressed to that level of hounding yet. He _would_ though, if he was anything like the Sam Dean remembered…

Then again, Dean had thought he’d known Sam four plus years ago, and Sam had gone and dumped him like a stone. Rejected him, broke off their relationship, picked the mother-of-all fights with Dad, and left for Stanford without so much as glance back. He’d rejected Dean, kicked him when he was down, hit him where he was vulnerable. Seeing as it was Sam who had seduced him in the first place…

Pain was the clue that brought Dean back to himself, grounded him in his body. His fist was aching, the tile of the shower enclosure faintly cracked where he’d pounded it. He never should have given in. He was a freak. An abomination. Dad had suspected. Had _known_. After Sam had left he’d tanned Dean’s hide, beat the ever-loving shit out of him in a fit of drunken rage and Dean had _let him_. He hadn’t fought back. He hadn’t tried to get away. He hadn’t done anything to calm John down or direct his frustration elsewhere. For the first time in his life he’d just stood there and took it. He’d broken three ribs and sprained his ankle, the rest of him covered in cuts and bruises, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to make him _pay_ for what he’d done. _Defiling_ his baby brother. Corrupting him. The sweet, innocent charge he’d been given to protect.

John had blamed Dean for driving Sam away or for being too soft on him. John hadn’t been too thrilled about either or both of his sons being gay, but then again, that was because a large percentage of hunters were homophobic dicks, not because John personally had any problem with who people loved or fucked—if he had, well he would have been an even bigger hypocrite than he already was... John was not an intolerant man, he just wished his sons would be spared some of the hostility and threats that certain elements of the hunter community liked to direct at anyone... different. They were the hunters who hunted more because they hated and feared anything not like _them_ , anything _unnatural_ , than because they wanted to protect the innocent, save people, or get revenge for lost loved ones. 

For all his faults, John Winchester was a standup guy when it came to being enlightened about his and others’ sexualities… but there was a long way between being gay and committing incest. And he’d been crystal clear on his stance on the latter. Pastor Jim had too.

Dean probably would have let John kill him, more out of his own sense of guilt and shame and failure than any actual death wish, but John had stopped himself. Drunk as he was, lost in his own demons, John had been so _shocked_ at Dean’s lack of response, complete passivity, the he’d stopped, cleaned Dean up, and locked Dean in his bedroom until John had sobered up. After that they’d never really talked (because Winchester’s didn’t talk about feelings), and Dean had tamped down on his emotions, locked that part of himself away. It hurt like hell being away from Sam, especially when Sam didn’t respond to his calls. But Dean had figured that was for the best. He locked away his pain behind a cocky layer of false bravado and fucked his way through as many hunts as possible.

Most of them—and for the first two years, it was almost entirely women—were none the wiser. Cassie, he’d liked her. She’d really like him back, but she hadn’t bought for a second that he was straight. He told her about Sam—the only person he’d ever told—well, not that Sam was his _brother_ , but his ex who broke his heart, and she’d understood. But then he’d gone and told her the _other_ secret, and well… she’d thought he was being a coward, using a crazy story as an excuse to push her away, make her break up with him rather than admitting he was still in love with Sam (or not comfortable enough with women) to really make the relationship work.

Dean had been celibate for two months after that breakup, more because he couldn’t get a handle on who he was than out of any aversion to sex or desire to hold himself apart. When he’d finally thrown himself back into the ring again, his patterns had reset—sure he _flirted_ with chicks a whole hell of a lot, but when it actually came to hookups, about 75% of them were with dudes. Dad had grunted the first time after that that he’d caught Dean on his knees blowing a guy behind the local pool hall, but aside from that, he shut up about it. And things… stabilized, worked their way out into a new normal, one Dean thought he was doing a fairly good job of living with.

Until…

Well then Dad started acting all cagey and up and disappeared, and Dean, in a moment of weakness, and feeling suddenly adrift in the universe, scared and unsettled in a way he hadn’t been since he was four years old, had turned to the one person he who might understand, who might provide comfort. And a part of him had been kicking himself ever since. 

It had _hurt_ seeing Sam with Jess. He wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that Sam had seemed so genuinely happy. He’d tried to distance himself from Sam—Sam was smugly superior, Sam didn’t give any indication he felt anything but frustration and hostility for Dean, Sam still hated Dad’s guts and didn’t seem to care if he lived or died. But then Sam had come _with_ him, and there was that moment before Jess had shown up, when Sam was fighting Dean, when he’d _realized_ who Dean was, and for a few seconds it was almost like the prelude to sex. 

Then Jess had died. Bleeding, screaming, burning on the ceiling, and any feelings Dean had had had been sublimated by his grief for Sam’s loss, his need to protect and comfort and shelter. For a while, it had been okay. It was all he could do to keep Sam from flying apart, all he could do to keep his own fear and panic over Dad’s disappearance and the _reappearance_ of whatever had killed Mom, from eating him alive.

They fell into old patterns. Dean took the bed by the door. He lay awake at night, listening to Sam breathe (and cry and gasp and scream himself awake from his nightmares), and little by little, the panic had settled. Only now, Dean was left with the undeniable truth—he was still in love with Sam. Still had _feelings_.

And Dean sure as hell wasn’t going to give Sam the satisfaction of some touchy-feely chick-flick moment, especially not when Sam was going and throwing their history back in his face. Calling him homophobic, what an ass. He _wished_ he could just be mad at Sam, rather than the insult twisting him up inside.

The thing was, he just couldn’t understand how Sam could _do_ it. How he could be so nonchalant about being Dean’s pretend boyfriend all the while insisting they were just brothers and joking about it like it didn’t mean anything. Maybe he’d never meant anything to Sam, but fuck if he thought he’d raised Sam better than that. It hurt. It stung.

Dean was just gonna have to suck it up and bury it. Like he always did. He was _good_ at that.

Only every time he thought about doing that, this wave of overwhelming panic rushed over him. It was so strong it made him dizzy. It had happened once when he was driving, and he’d almost blacked out, swerving into the opposite lane before he got a hold on it and merged back onto the right side of the road. Thankfully, Sam had been asleep for that, because he had no clue how he would have explained that otherwise. 

It had happened again, after the whole thing with the lake that drowned people. He’d identified too strongly with the kid. He’d allowed himself to feel, if only for a moment, and when he’d tried to get a handle on it, shove it back down, he’d been faced with a feeling of overwhelming _doom_. It was sappy and melodramatic and made Dean’s teeth itch to admit, but he was starting to be more terrified of _not_ saying something. Of _not_ telling Sam how he still felt, of not trying to do something to ease the barrier that had sprung up between them, than he was of facing rejection or damnation for acting on his (romantic, sexual) love for his younger brother.

He’d tried to push the feeling away again, just now, and he’d found himself curled up and shaking on the floor of the fabulous steam shower with no recollection of how he’d got there. He must have made some sort of noise, however, because now Sam _was_ , pounding on the door, calling his name.

“I’m fine!” he snapped, harsher than intended, as he shakily stood, and turned off the water. He took his time drying off with one of the extra-poufy sheet-sized towels that graced the bathroom of the model home, only to realize, belatedly, he’d completely neglected to bring any clothes in with him.

Embarrassed, but resolved not to show it, Dean stormed out of the shower into the living space, using all of his frustration and guilt and channeling it into false bravado. He started to make a beeline for his duffel bag and the clean clothes within, but stopped when he caught sight of Sam who was staring at him with open shock.

“Fine,” he said. Then louder, “Fine! You want to know what the whole gay freakout was, Sam? Hmm? It’s me being uncomfortable with people seeing us,” he waggled a finger back and forth between him and Sam, “for what we really are—really _were_ ,” he corrected himself. “You begged me to kiss you, to fuck me, to fuck you. You told me you loved me. And I let you make me feel. And I tried—I tried to make things right. To be someone good enough for you… and _dad_. But it was never enough. You left me. You left us. And Dad _knew_ , and he hated me for it. But I was the good kid. His good soldier, so I stayed. Because you didn’t want me anymore anyway. Then I go to Stanford for your help, and I see you, so happy with her—with what I could never give you. And then she _died_ , and I couldn’t stop it. And you’re still mourning her, but me—I guess I never meant enough to you for you to realize what it does to me, every time you joke about being my partner, my boyfriend, lover, when that was _true_ and you threw me away.” 

By the time he was finished, the water had evaporated and Dean was flushed red with embarrassment. He stormed off to the bedroom, snagging his duffle on the way. He was dressed and halfway into his boots before Sam came storming in. 

He didn’t speak, just stood there, face pinched, looking poleaxed. 

This was why Winchesters didn’t do chick flicks. Speak your mind about emotions and everything went totally to shit. And look, it was _Dean_ who had broken the rule. He should be apologizing… but he was trying to be there for Sam as he mourned the love of his life. But there was only so much Dean could take, seeing that he was pretty sure Sam was the love of _his_ life, if that sort of thing did exist. And ever since Jessica’s funeral he’d been feeling strangely… defiant. Like Dean needed to speak his mind, no matter how uncomfortable it was or awkward. He had a compulsion to tell Sam how he felt, not make the same mistake again, which was… he wasn’t sure. He just didn’t think he could survive another four years of separation from Sam or watch Sam pair off with some other hot chick or cute girl to go have 2.5 kids a dog and a picket fence. 

When ten minutes had ticked by and Sam still hadn’t spoken or moved, Dean sat down on the bed in a huff, arms crossed over his chest. He fell back and laid there. Waiting. 

A minute later, Sam joined him leaving a good six inches of space between them, but lying next to Dean, nevertheless. “I—I never wanted to leave you,” he said at last. 

Dean didn’t grunt, didn’t move, he just blinked, surprised, because well, that was news to him.

“I thought Dad suspected. He caught me coming out of your room at Pastor Jim’s. I was afraid you’d choose him over me, and I didn’t want to put you in that position. So I dumped you, and left. Wanted to go to Stanford anyway. Didn’t think you’d come with me.”

Dean listened. Truth was, at the time, he probably wouldn’t have. Before John had turned on him about Sam, well… Dean would have balked at betraying his father’s trust. But now, after… the fight had given him a new perspective. 

“At first, it hurt too much even talking to you on the phone. I started dating, fucked around, met Jess, and she—she was _perfect_ , for what I should want. But she wasn’t _you_. She could never be you. But I thought that maybe she was the best thing I could have. And then you came back and you never gave me any hint you still had feelings for me. I know—I know maybe that’s not fair, but anyway… you came, I went with you, and she died. And I _miss_ her. But you’re here. And a part of me can’t stop forgetting that the past four years happened because sometimes I feel like we never broke up, never fought.”

“We’re were we should be,” Dean murmured.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, closing the distance between them. It was just a brush of shoulders, holding of hands, but it meant everything.

~~~

**Lawrence, Kansas—2006**

“Well, that’s different,” she said, giving both boys a long, lingering look up and down. “Although I can’t say I’m surprised.” She tsked and shook her head. “Making two brothers _soul mates_. How they could expect anything else to happen, I have no idea. Bet they hoped you’d struggle over it, be part of your burden to bear,” her gaze lingered on Sam, “or a test,” she added, looking at dean. Her eyes locked with his, and for a moment it felt like she was seeing through him, looking at someone who wasn’t there. “I’m pleased to see you’ve avoided that trap. Being true to yourselves, finding happiness together.” 

Missouri reached out and took their hands in hers, first Dean’s then Sam’s, and squeezed. “Bet it’s eating at you though. Makin’ you hesitate, scared to find your Daddy. ‘Fraid of what he’ll say when he finds out, or if he figures it out.”

Sam straightened, spine going stiff beside Dean.

Dean’s eyes dropped. It was reflex. Shame. He didn’t want to face it, even if he was starting to believe he was wrong to feel ashamed. That flare of defiance altered destination of his averted gaze, so instead of fixating on his feet, he looked over at Sam, and what he saw, surprised him. This wasn’t Sam, defiant, or Sam, angry. This was Sam, _scared_. Dean had only seen his brother like that a few times before, on those occasions when Dad had truly terrified him. It _hurt_ Dean to see it now, after the agonizing week of touchy-feely chick flick moments that Dean almost couldn’t believe he’d actually lived through, and something un-stuck inside him.

“Sam,” he said, pushing everything he felt for his brother into that one word. “Don’t.” With his free hand, he laced his fingers through Sam’s, twining them together. 

Something inside Sam seemed to release at the gesture, and Sam’s posture went slack for a moment before resettling into something more confident, defiant. Sam’s lawyer mode, Dean liked to think of it. When this was all over, if Sam got his wish, that’s what he’d be like, how he’d act every day, bowling over any obstacles thrown in his path.

“Good,” Missouri said with a smile. “Glad to see you’ve figured out you’re in the right. And don’t you be worrying ‘bout your daddy. John Winchester will come around if he knows what’s good for him. And if not, well, he’s not the one who’s got to live your lives. _You_ are,” she said. “Now come, sit down and stay a while. Tell me all about what’s on your minds.” As she spoke she turned and walked deeper into the house, leading them away from the foyer.

“You, Dean, are something special. I’ve heard tell of your kind, but never seen hide nor hair of one before.”

“His kind?” Sam asked, skeptical.

“Oh you’re special too, sugar. Special and then some. But I already knew that. Your Daddy’s been spilling his guts about you and everything he’s afraid of about you since he first found me right after your mommy died. Dean on the other hand.” She shook her head. “You’re unexpected. Weren’t like this last time. That changes things.”

“Last time?” Dean asked, as he and Sam took seats. Sam’s eyebrow was cocked up to his hairline, and Dean was starting to wonder if maybe this Missouri Mosely was just crazy, no matter what their Dad’s journal said about her.

“You’re a time traveler, well of a sort, an old soul in a young body, sent back to rewrite time. You got a cosmic do-over, which isn’t supposed to be possible. But here we are. We had this conversation before, but it didn’t go the same way. And that tends to mean that whatever happened, things didn’t turn out right… or so the theory goes.”

“Theory?” Dean asked again.

“There probably hasn’t been anyone with this… gift in the last five hundred years. I can see it though, the afterimage, of who you were before. It’s like an echo in the corner of your eye, just waiting to be seen. You have memories of what happened the first time. Probably haven’t figured out what they are yet, but they’ll serve you well when you do.”

And to think their biggest concern that morning had been trying to figure out why Sam was having dreams about their old house and maybe figuring out what had happened to their Dad.

“What does that mean?” Sam asked for Dean.

“You boys have got a journey ahead of you, and a terrible burden. You’ve got one chance and exactly one chance to get things right and fix the mess you made the first time.” She looked down at their clasped hands and smiled. “Although something tells me you might already be on the right track.”

~~~

“I wonder what made you choose it?” Sam murmured, talking Into Dean’s hair.

Dean craned his head, hair catching in the sheets, to look up at Sam. “I have no Idea. I don’t remember, I mean technically I’m pretty sure the guy who made that choice wasn’t me. I’ve never been him, and the whole point of this exercise was so that I’ll never be him. Maybe It wasn’t even my— _his_ —choice.”

“What do you mean?” Sam’s hand stopped in its rhythmic stroking of Dean’s hair.

“Maybe I was duped.”

“I don’t think so,” Sam scoffed. “You don’t fool easy.”

“Well that’s me. I don’t know about _him_.”

Sam hummed low in his throat, considering. “But you get flashes sometimes, right? Glimpses of what was or is or would be, or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Dean admitted, not sure what Sam was getting at.

“So you do know him, you, the other you. He’s not a complete stranger—you’ve got clues.”

“I guess,” Dean said, shrugging.

Sam propped himself up on his elbow and leaned over Dean, staring deep into his eyes. “Well, what do you think?”

Sam’s eyes were so Intent, so _Intense_ in their emotion that Dean’s breath caught, and he had to blink to look away. He didn’t want to, didn’t want to touch that place deep in his mind where the growing awareness of what _would have been_ lived, sneaking out in his darkest moments and threatening to overwhelm him. He could lie...

 

Only... but he couldn’t lie, not to Sam. So he swallowed hard, and reached back to let the truth out. 

“I don’t think he had much of a choice,” he said softly, his eyes blinking open slowly to find Sam still staring down intently. “I get the impression he was making the best of a bad situation, and at that point, starting over couldn’t have been any worse than what had come to be. He—I think he’d been living like that for a long time. Years, decades, maybe longer... he kept facing choices that weren’t really choices. And he was sad, and angry, and so... so, so tired. And I think this was the first time, maybe ever, where he got to do something for himself, because he wanted to.”

Sam gazed down at Dean, the seconds ticking by. For the longest time his eyes were serious, sad, but at last something like understanding washed through him and he smiled, twining his fingers together with Dean’s and squeezing tightly. “I can’t imagine a world where I don’t choose you.”

Dean could Imagine, could feel It In every shadow, every flicker of recognition... a life where he never came clean, where he never confronted his own emotions, and where he chose Sam over, and over, and over again, but where those choices were never really for him, for either of them, not In any way that mattered. They hadn’t been together, hadn’t had a life together, but yet couldn’t seem to let each other die apart. It was bleak and dark and hollow. And Dean didn’t want to believe that world could ever exist. So he spoke the truth. “And I don’t want to.”

Sam lowered himself slowly, hovering over Dean until their lips met. The kiss was sweet, gentle, almost chaste, but for the promise of heat behind It.

Dean leaned up, chasing Sam’s mouth, begging entry with his tongue, seeking, searching. Sam opened up and took him in, letting Dean taste warmth and life cut with the cool tang of Sam’s peppermint toothpaste. 

Sam shifted over him, placing his hands on either side of Dean’s shoulders, before sliding his hands between Dean’s shirts and under Dean’s back. It was easy to let Sam embrace him, undress him. Sam worked silently, carefully divesting Dean of one article of clothing at a time, holding and supporting him and kissing him all the while. After a few minutes that felt both much longer and not nearly long enough, Dean was naked, with Sam still fully clothed above him, nestled between Dean’s spread legs. Sam smiled at him, pressed another quick kiss to Dean’s lips and a second to his forehead and stood in one languid motion. Sam stripped efficiently with enough grace to make watching him feel like a special show.

It mesmerized Dean, and before he knew it, Sam was settling back on the bed between Dean’s legs, a mostly deflated tube of lube retrieved from his pants pocket now clutched in his left hand.

Sam raised his right eyebrow and Dean nodded, a single dip of his chin. That was all the permission Sam needed. 

Cool, lube-slick fingers pressed against Dean’s hole, eliciting a tiny gasp. Sam’s fingers soon warmed In contact with Dean’s flushed skin, and soon they were massaging, coaxing his tight, pink rosebud to relax and unfurl. All the while Sam stared down Into Dean’s eyes, looking for any hint of discomfort.

When they’d first gotten back together, Dean hadn’t been able to stop his mind from drifting when they ~~fucked~~ made love. He’d wondered If Sam ever did this with Jess, if he’d shown the same care and reverence in bed with her as he did with Dean. Was it maybe transference? Sam’s habits from his relationship with Jess translating into how he handled Dean In bed?

He’d mentally kicked himself over and over again for going there, for letting his mind wander when Sam was— when Sam was inside him and around him and treating him with the sort of reverence Dean had always thought was reserved for superstitious people’s beliefs in gods who couldn’t care less. After all, he didn’t know how much time they had, If Sam might change his mind and run at any moment. He should have been living In the moment, breathing In everything Sam had to offer and holing it up inside, savoring each second, filing away the memories to sustain him through the bad times whenever the inevitable came to pass.

But he hadn’t been able to stop himself from going there, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how distasteful he found it comparing himself to Sam’s murdered girlfriend. HIs guilt wouldn’t let him.

He wasn’t sure If It was the passage of time, or allowing himself to really remember the first time they’d been together, or maybe it was hearing everyone repeating everything about soul mates, but the realization had burned through the guilt and doubt, and Dean had remembered. Jess had not been a delicate flower. And Sam had always treated Dean with reverence and care. Even when Sam was still for all intents and purposes a gangly teenager, he had treated Dean as delicate, precious, touched him as If he might vanish into thin air, held him as If he was the most beloved in all the world.

And what Sam was doing now, was more of the same. The same love and tenderness with which he’d always touched Dean. 

And Dean had never felt safer, never been more right, never felt more at peace than he did lying In Sam’s embrace. So he surrendered and the guilt had faded away, replaced only with peace.

Grounded back in his body now, Dean felt the stretch as Sam worked a third finger into his ass, scissoring and massaging as he coaxed Dean to relax. Sam crooked his fingers and rubbed against Dean’s prostate, eliciting a tiny gasp and moan of pure pleasure as Dean bucked off the bed.

“Sam—”

“Shh,” Sam said, pressing a finger on his free hand to Dean’s lips.

There was the sudden sense of loss and emptiness as Sam withdrew his fingers. Dean grunted, but his displeasure was short lived. Sam smiled down at him and leaned forward, plundering his mouth as he guided his cock Into Dean’s well-stretched hole. Dean gasped, electrified with the sensation of skin on skin, as Sam slowly eased into him. 

Sam thrust, slow and steady, a long slide Into Dean, giving him just enough time to adjust before sliding in further. He kept moving until finally he bottomed out, balls deep In Dean. He let out a little grunt of satisfaction, biting Dean’s lip as he began to withdraw, pulling out halfway before ramming back in.

Dean let his legs fall open wider, wrapping his heels around Sam’s hips, propelling him deeper still.

Sam took the Invitation and began to thrust in earnest, sliding Dean’s bent knees over his arms to improve the angle of penetration, while sliding one massive hand under Dean’s back and neck and cradling him to Sam’s chest.

The position felt Impossible, strained, and could have been awkward, what with Sam supporting all of his and most of Dean’s weight, and Dean being essentially bent In half, but Dean prided himself on his flexibility and Sam didn’t seem to mind, his recent vulnerability replaced by surety and strength. Every kiss was a proclamation, an absolution, a plea for forgiveness... and Dean found himself surrendering, forgiving, losing himself in the security of being held... Owned... Loved.

There were no words spoken. No sweet talk. No dirty sex talk. Just the faint slap of flesh and the panting of breath, and the faintest moans of need. After a few minutes, Sam changed his angle, manipulating Dean’s boneless body to suit his needs. The new position had Sam tagging Dean’s prostate with every thrust, and soon Dean was keening with need. If Sam kept it up much longer he’s come completely untouched. 

“Sam, please,” he panted eventually.

But Sam just smiled, and lifted his head from where he was nibbling on Dean’s ear, to kiss down his neck and take a pert nipple into his mouth, sucking first, then worrying it with his teeth. 

Dean gasped, clutching at Sam’s back. He wanted to pull away, wanted to scream, wanted Sam impossibly further inside him. 

“Hold on, you can do It for me baby,” Sam coaxed, but he didn’t let up on his relentless overstimulation. He varied the length and speed of his thrusts so some just tapped Dean’s prostate, while others rubbed along it. 

Dean was flying apart, the only thing keeping him grounded was the feel of Sam’s skin against his, warm and flushed, slick with sweat, but touching him everywhere, inside and out. He hung on struggling with every fiber of his being to hold off his orgasm, hold on, because Sam asked. 

At long last, it could have been minutes or hours later, Dean didn’t know, Sam’s thrusts grew more erratic and frantic. He slipped his left hand between their bodies and gripped Dean’s neglected dick. Sam’s grasp was firm and sure; he stroked in time with his thrusts. “Come for me,” he panted, swiping his thumb over the head as he slid all the way In.

It was too much. Dean tumbled over the edge, coming effortlessly.

Sam stroked him through it, his rhythm faltering as he rammed in one last time and came, painting Dean’s passage with the warmth of his come. He stayed that way, softening cock still In Dean’s ass, as he drew his hand away from Dean’s dick and gently, slowly stroked the side of his face and down his arm.

~~~

**Burkittsville, Indiana, etc.—March and April 2006**

For the month after their encounter with Missouri, Dean did his best to ignore and forget what she’d told them. Who cared what he’d seen? What it felt like he remembered? They could be dream, waking dreams, or his imagination, or the results of something supernatural. Maybe he’d encountered a D’jinn. Maybe Dean was stuck inside his head, slowly being bled dry at the hands of a glowing, blue, tattooed guy. Only something deep inside told Dean that wasn’t how D’jinn’s worked. If he was trapped in their fantasy, it would be a _fantasy_ the world as he could only imagine it. And he might see flashes of the real world, but not flashes of a world that never existed.

_Never mind that neither he nor his dad had ever fought a D’jinn. Never mind that when he checked Dad’s journal there was no mention of half the details he knew in his gut were true. Never mind if Dean were going to imagine a fantasy world he was pretty sure he would have done more than giving him and Sam a burgeoning relationship—he would have saved Mom, or made sure he and Sam weren’t brothers so their relationship wouldn’t be taboo._

Whatever the reason, Dean was willing to dismiss it as lack of sleep coupled with fear, stress, healthy paranoia, and Missouri making his imagination run wild.

But that didn’t explain how he knew which spirit was haunting the asylum, or how he was expecting the doors to and windows to shut tight, or how he _led_ them to the vengeful spirit’s remains with unfailing accuracy and seemed to dodge every attack before it happen. An active imagination _couldn’t_ explain how he woke up _knowing_ the morning they drove to Burkittsville that the mysterious disappearances and the town’s prosperity had something to do with a particularly gruesome Norse god. And even a healthy dose of paranoia and self-esteem issues didn’t account for the feeling he had the whole time he and Sam were there. Some part of him kept expecting Sam to leave, to get frustrated and fed up and storm out, some half-cocked pipe dream of tracking down John on his own faster and better than he could with Dean. And it wasn’t just his fear that Sam would once again reject him talking. There was something _out_ there hunting for them, hunting _Sam_ intent on drawing him away, separating them, and somehow that would be the worst thing that could happen. 

There was nothing—but the truth Missouri had revealed to them—that could explain why Dean knew that everything hinged on this moment. Last time, the first time, every other time had unfurled, this was the beginning of the end. One wrong move... He was terrified to let Sam out of his sight even if he couldn’t remember what was out there, he remembered that this was where it had happened. 

Sam knew something was up, but he kept his mouth shut. He just kept throwing Dean increasingly concerned glances the longer they spent in town. But Sam didn’t press. That night, as they curled up together on the queen bed farther from the door, Sam just held him, let Dean latch onto him like a limpet or a drowning man clutching to a life raft half-afraid it was a mirage that would vanish at any instant. After a half hour, with Dean still wide awake, hear racing, Sam rolled them, placing Dean back between him and the door. Dean clung to Sam tighter, but the veneer of protection was what Dean needed. He wouldn’t let anyone take Sam from him. As long as he breathed (and maybe even after) he would fight for Sam, save Sam, never let him go. 

Sam kissed his head and Dean let unconsciousness take him. 

The next day, the feeling was back. Growing, pressing, whatever the threat was, his subconscious seemed to be telling him it was a bigger deal than the sacrificial nutcase of Burkittsville and their scythe-wielding Vanir.

Dean just wished he could remember what the fuck the threat was, especially after the locals managed to take them both by surprise, knocking them unconscious with a skilled combination of tire iron and chloroform they had gotten from who knows where. Even when Dean awoke in some kind of basement root cellar with Emily, the sweet, unsuspecting orphaned niece of the crazy Jorgesons. 

Sam was nowhere to be seen and Dean wasn’t sure what was more terrifying—that he was trapped, concussed, drugged, and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey (or sacrificial lamb) about to become chow for some couple-hungry Norse demigod, or that Sam was somewhere else, maybe hurt, maybe restrained, but definitely _out there_ alone where something was waiting for him. 

It was distracting. Nerve-wracking. As soon as Dean came around, he started trying to free himself from his restraints, but every other thought was for Sam and what might be happening to him. What might _catch_ him without Dean out there to save him. 

No, not to _save_ him. Dean understood that now. Just like every other feeling, flickering ghostly, echo of a flash of something from another time, another timeline, his other self... the realization settled on Dean with the certainty of truth. If he tried to save Sam he would fail. They would fail. And history would repeat itself. No, they could only survive if they stuck together, saved each other, lived up to their full potential as a united front, a team, and that meant not trying to change who they were, but accepting themselves.

“You’re really worried about him, aren’t you?” Emily asked, stirring Dean from his musings.

His head throbbed and he kept trying to focus on something that wasn’t really there, just out of view, a glimpse through the corner of his eye. He forced himself to focus on the here and now. Like it or not, avoiding being eaten by a creepy scarecrow god was the more immediate threat. So he answered. “Yeah.”

Emily nodded, wincing slightly, but all in all looking better than Dean felt. Good, it would be helpful if they weren’t _both_ half out of it. “He’s not really your brother, is he?” she asked.

“What? He—” Dean found himself sputtering. The story they’d told to Emily, which was different from the cover story they’d had for the locals at large, was true. 

“Is he your, boyfriend?” She stuttered around the word. “Partner? Lover?”

It just wasn’t the whole truth. Dean could feel his face getting red, the flush creeping down his neck.

“It’s okay,” she continued. “You’re not exactly the first gay couple I’ve ever met. I get that traveling in this part of the country has gotta be pretty nerve-wracking. Small towns, Middle America... I get why you’d pretend otherwise.”

Dean just nodded. No way was getting into how the cover story was true too. But there was no way could he pass off his concern for Sam as brotherly affection. “I have no idea what they did to him,” he said instead. It was true, even if his bigger fear was unrelated to whatever the townsfolk of Burkittsville had done to the spare.

Emily just nodded, like she understood how terrifying that was despite their current predicament. “What do you think’s going to happen to us?”

“Ritual sacrifice,” Dean answered honestly, choking back a wave of bile that threatened to escape. 

Emily turned green. “I can’t believe...” She shook her head. “I’m their niece.” Her expression wasn’t one of denial though, more like sick realization.

“If it’s any consolation, they didn’t want to sacrifice you. Sam and I just kind of got in the way. Kept them from using their original targets.”

“I’m not upset you saved some unsuspecting couple from getting murdered. I just—how could they ever think this is okay? I don’t know what’s worse, that they tried to let me think they were decent people and felt no qualms about murdering folks behind my back, while I befriended them, or that in the end even family wasn’t enough to stop them.”

“People do some crazy shit when they’re desperate,” Dean said, feeling more weight and certainty behind that statement than he had reason to, at least as far as he was aware. 

“You guys deal with this kind of stuff a lot, don’t you?” Emily realized. “So what’s the plan?”

Dean shrugged, or tried to, the bindings were too tight to give him room to move. “Try to figure out a way out of these restraints before we become scarecrow chow. Hope Sammy’s somewhere a little less secure.” Dean continued struggling against the bindings, trying to see if he could get his boot free, maybe somehow get to the knife hidden in it. He couldn’t move his hands or arms or shoulders, but if he could kick it towards Emily with his foot, she didn’t seem to be quite so tightly bound... maybe she could sink down the pole they had her tied to and reach it. He knew the rope and duct tape they had him mummified in would allow no such flexibility.

“So, you guys deal with this often?” She asked with a nervous laugh. 

“Hmm?” Dean said, his mind a mile away again. He looked up to meet Emily’s somewhat wild eyes. “This? Being fed to homicidal scarecrows? Not so much. But hunting things? Fighting stuff from your worst nightmares and fairytales gone wrong? That’s kind of the family business.”

“Then your... partner, I’m sure he’ll be fine.” 

Dean stilled at that, one foot crossed over the other as he tried to kick his pant leg up enough to expose the boot with the concealed knife. Because this? Being comforted by a civilian he was supposed to be protecting while they were both being held prisoner? That was not how this was supposed to go. Emily should be freaking the fuck out. Her own family had hid a secret from her and was now trying to kill her by ritual sacrifice. She shouldn’t be comforting Dean. But...

“It’s not that,” Dean said shaking his head. Then, “I’m sorry. I am trying to get us out of this. This—” he did his best to make an all-encompassing gesture with the fingers he had wriggled free. “This isn’t why I’m worried about Sam. There’s something _hunting_ him. Hunting us, but Sam in particular. We only learned about it about a month ago. Don’t know the who or the what exactly and we only have half an idea of the why. But—I’m pretty sure it’s here. It’s been distracting me. And I know that’s bad, and it’s my job to protect you... to save people. But what’s out there, it scares me a lot more than a homicidal scarecrow with a couples’ fetish. And if Sammy faces it alone—”

He couldn’t finish the thought.

Emily seemed to understand though and as awkward and touchy feely as the situation had gotten, she seemed to take it in stride, let the issue drop, and started working to get herself free.

Dean kept struggling, trying to focus on the knife in his boot instead of Sam, but his concentration kept waning, wandering. With each millimeter he wiggled the boot loose from his foot, his heart beat faster and faster, until it was thumping against his ribs, deafening him with the rush of blood in his ears. Something was coming. Something was out there. Something bad… if he could only _remember_ , but maybe that was the problem. Maybe he’d never seen how things went down the first time. Maybe he was missing something crucial, and now he was separated from Sam. And apart they were weaker.

Just when it felt like his heart would explode, the door to the root cellar burst open, and in charged Sam, wild-eyed and slightly manic looking, he was wielding a hatchet and still had duct tape and bits of rope stuck to his shit, pants, and hair. “Dean!” he shouted, the sound bitten off with shock or grief. There was a pause as Sam visibly composed himself. “You alright?”

Panting, Dean straightened up from the tape-impeded, twisted half-slouch he’d managed to find himself in and struggled upright. “Yeah, Sammy, I’m fine. We’re okay. W–what—” he stammered, fear overriding his ability to form words. “What about you? What happened? Where did you—”

Sam was crossing the cellar as Dean spoke, whipping a pocket knife from his belt and sawing through the twine and tape that had Dean’s arms strapped to his sides and his legs fastened together and all of him stuck to a post. Sam shook his head as he worked. “They knocked me out, tied me up, had me in some closet in the auto body shop.” Sam paused, eyes going distant for a split second, before he seemed to shake it off. 

“Yeah? Your head okay? How’d you get out?” Dean asked, keeping a lid on the need to touch, check, see and feel for himself that Sam was okay.

“Tell you later. It’s not important. Just gotta get you,” he turned to face Emily, “both of you, out of here before the Jorgesons come back. I know how to stop it.”

“Stop what?” Emily asked.

“The sacrifices. The first tree—we destroy it, we destroy the spirit—deity—whatever that’s claiming human lives.”

“How did you—” Dean trailed off, because he and Emily had talked about the first tree, she’d mentioned it somewhere in her ramblings, trying to keep Dean sane while he flailed about, panicking over Sam and whatever was out there, after him, but Sam hadn’t been there. Dean was the one with _memories_ , not Sam, so… 

“Like I said, I’ll tell you some other time. Not now,” Sam finished, freeing Dean of the last of his bindings. As Sam helped Dean up, his hand paused on Dean’s cheek, a brief touch that lingered, turning into a caress. Their eyes met, fear and love and trust, exchanged in that instant before Sam moved on. “Now,” Sam continued, addressing the room at large and crouching beside Emily to free her, “we get the hell out of here and get you somewhere safe.”

They made it out of the root cellar and halfway to the Impala before the Jorgesons’ and the rest of the townsfolk caught up with them. Dean could have sworn at least one person really was wielding a pitchfork and another had an honest-to-god, flaming torch. Sam picked up the pace, but rather than flee in the Impala, he stopped only to retrieve a gas can and lighter from the trunk, and set off at a run towards the Orchard.

“Um, don’t we want to stay out of there?” Emily asked. 

“Stay close,” Sam commanded, but didn’t shorten his stride, so Dean and Emily followed after him at a run, doing their best not to get left behind. Sam made it to the tree—how did he find it—in record time, and pulled Dean and Emily out of the way of the scarecrow’s scythe with inches to spare, just as the crowd caught up with them. The scarecrow turned his attention on the townsfolk before the First Tree went up in smoke, Sam, Dean, and Emily didn’t stick around to see if there were any more sacrifices before the deity was destroyed.

The next morning, when they took Emily to the bus station, the panicked, creeping sensation that had haunted Dean ever since they talked to Missouri—hell ever since his future self overwrote time and landed back in himself, or however that worked—was back and stronger than ever. He looked around, searching, eyes darting from bus passenger to driver to teller and back, looking for anyone or any _thing_ that didn’t seem quite right. But no matter how long the sensation stayed or how it grew, he couldn’t quite place it. He wasn’t even sure if he was looking for a person or something else entirely.

As they were leaving, Emily safely on a bus back to Boston, Dean saw something out of the corner of his eye. He looked again, found himself staring at the back of a blonde head. A petite, slender woman with short-cropped blonde hair and a leather jacket was standing in line for a ticket, facing away from them. The drumbeat of terror that had been Dean’s constant companion since landing in the altered time stream escalated to a crescendo. And he found himself forced to look away, panting.

“What is it?” Sam asked, picking up on Dean’s sudden fear.

It was Dean’s turn not to answer. He didn’t know. Couldn’t say. Wasn’t sure. There as only one word that hung in the back of his mind, _Meg_. It was _Meg_ , that he had seen, or a version of her—he wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But whatever she was, she was the thing he had been sensing, coming closer, ever closer, coming for Sam. Trying to destroy them.

~~~

Any lingering doubts Dean had about being an older version of himself dumped back in his life, reliving it, overwriting history, went away on the rawhead hunt.

One moment he was holding a Taser, standing in a basement full of stagnant water, a perfect hunting ground for their monster of the week with its affinity for plumbing, and the next he was seeing himself die from massive electrocution.  
He jumped backwards out of the puddle on reflex, gasping for breath, the phantom pain of the electrocution thundering through his chest. For a moment he could _feel_ his charred lungs and burned heart, could feel every stress fracture in his ribs and sternum, understood with certainty what it meant to die, to know death was coming, swift, certain, and inevitable. And the next he was fine, whole, healthy, alive, _young_ , just a few months past 27 with his life ahead of him.

He’d seen a memory, an afterimage echoing through from the first timeline. Saw what had happened, and relived it—for an instant he was _both_ Deans in both lives, both times. This was where it had changed. This was the first time he had died, or at least the event that had set it in motion. 

Of course jumping back out of the puddle made a lot of noise, attracted the rawhead, and nearly accomplished the same thing that electrocution had done the first time around. 

Sam swooped in at the last moment, cracking the rawhead in the back of the skull with an improvised bat, giving him enough time to pull Dean to his feet and shuffling them both out of the massive puddle and onto the comparatively safe, dry stairs, before pulling the trigger on his own Taser.

The fight was over almost before it had begun. 

That night, after Dean lay in Sam’s arms, a 2-inch gash on his forearm newly stitched and sprained ankle neatly wrapped, he told Sam what had happened. Seeing himself, feeling himself die.

Sam kissed him on the temple and asked, voice little more than a whisper, “If you got electrocuted, badly enough you were dying, how did—the first time, how did you stay alive? I mean… this wasn’t it right? Missouri said you were much, much older and you’d come back…”

“There’s a preacher in Nebraska whose wife has a reaper on a leash. She’s playing god, trading lives of the dead and the living.” The knowledge came to him, certain and true, as if it had always been there, just waiting to be uncovered. It was unsettling to say the least, and yet it made perfect sense. 

“If that’s true,” Sam said, voice certain and confident, “then don’t we need to… take care of it? Free the reaper? Restore the balance of life and death?”

Dean just shook his head, an image of a beautiful woman with silky blond hair, a soft voice, dancing eyes, and a heart-melting smile, flashing through his mind. He didn’t remember her name, but she was the kind of person he might have made himself fall for if he wasn’t with Sam. The reaper could help her. In the first timeline, she hadn’t gotten the chance. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I don’t think it’s something that can go on forever. But I’m not sure if we should try to fix it now. If we do… So far we’ve been walking the same path, shadowing ourselves. It’s like everything we do is just a heartbeat away from the way things were the first time. That’s been okay, but I don’t know how long we can keep it up. What if we make the same mistake we did the first time? What then? What if I came all this way, and we ruin it before the universe has a chance to change?”

Sam regarded him for a moment, skepticism in his eyes.

“I’m not saying we let the preacher’s wife get away with it forever. Just… maybe now isn’t the time.”

Sam let the subject drop, and in return, Dean didn’t push the still-unanswered question about how Sam had gotten free back in Burkittsville. 

“I think,” Dean began, letting the thought develop more fully, “we need to stop following in an echo of our original footsteps. We need to change things—more than just,” he squeezed Sam’s hand, “being together. We need a game-changer. We need to throw what’s out there off its game.”

“How do we do that?” Sam asked.

“Fuck with the timeline. Figure out what we were going to do and then, do it differently. Arrive earlier, skip a hunt and come back and do it another time, maybe let some things go.”

~~~

**Cape Girardeau, Missouri–April 2006**

Their plan worked, in that they got to Cape Girardeau before Cassie called to ask for help and with an idea already formed about what was going on, but not before her father died. The realization hit Dean like a punch to the gut and hurt almost as much as the vaguely betrayed look Cassie bestowed upon him upon their reunion. 

Dean had found that if he tried, chased the half-seen glimpses at the corners of his peripheral vision, sometimes he could glean details, snapshots of what had happened the first time around. And with the snapshots came memories, and if he concentrated hard enough, sometimes he just _knew_ what had happened and how to stop it from happening again.

“Dean!” Cassie exclaimed, her conflicted expression settling on something like happy relief. “I was going to call you.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he managed to reply, eyes darting to Sam, who was hovering behind his shoulder. He was planning to stammer out something about the family business and how it had brought their paths together again, glossing right over the part where he had once told her about hunting and she had told him he was crazy and delusional and kicked him out of her home and out of her life, but he was interrupted before he got the chance. 

“Oh my god, is that Sam?” she asked, covering her mouth with both hands. 

“Huh?” Sam asked.

“Of course it’s you. You look exactly like the picture Dean used to carry in his wallet. I knew he was still in love with you even when he was trying to convince himself he wanted to be with me.” Her eyes softened, and she looked Dean in the eye. “That’s a big part of why I didn’t believe you when you told me about—you know, hunting? I thought you were finally dumping me to go beg Sam to take you back or pine over the _memory_ of Sam, but were too chicken to tell me to my face so you made up some ridiculous story.”

“How do you know we’re together?” Sam asked.

“I’m a reporter. It’s my job to observe.” Her pointer finger darted back and forth between the Dean and Sam. “Your body language is all wrong for anything else. The way you share personal space, the way Dean defers to you when he’s not certain, the way you, Sam, followed him into the room. That’s not brotherly or friendly body language. You’re a couple… and Dean was telling the truth about vengeful spirits when he tried to tell me what you did all those years ago, and I just threw it back in his face, I’m sorry.”

With the help of the flicker’s of memory Dean kept gathering, it didn’t take long to track down the possessed truck and dispatch it once and for all. 

Cassie and her mom were thankful and appreciative, but mostly left Dean and Sam alone, too lost in their own grief. 

Later that night, lying together in bed in a motel room far away from Cassie, Cape Girardeau already in their rearview mirror, Sam spoke up. “I think I know where we’re supposed to be headed next, and I don’t think we should go there.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asked the same terrified chill that had been his constant companion in Burkittsville settling down in his bones once again. 

“I’ve been having… visions,” Sam began. “More visions. Not just the vision about our old house in Kansas. It started with me dreaming about Jess—”

Dean flinched at the name, but Sam just squeezed him tighter. “I dreamed she was burning on the ceiling. I dreamed about her funeral. I just kept dreaming, but somewhere along the way the dreams changed into something else. When we were in Burkittsville, I kept seeing the tree in my mind. I dreamed it before we got there, I saw myself setting it on fire, and knew it would somehow solve the problem. But then… then I started seeing other things. You, tied up. Me tied up. You in danger. It hadn’t happened yet, so I didn’t know what it meant. But then I came to in a utility closet in the body shop tied up with rope and duct tape and pinned inside by some kind of tool box that was blocking my way out, and I knew—I _knew_ I had to get to you, that you were running out of time. But the rope was too tight and the duct tape wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t get out of there. And then all of a sudden—the tape ripped, the ropes broke, and the tool box… moved. One minute it was pinning the door closed and it wouldn’t budge. The next—I was outside the closet and the tool box was on the other side of the garage. Flattened.” Sam took a long pause to swallow and breathe. “I don’t—”

“Telekinesis.”

“What?” Sam asked, confused, then continued. “I was going to say that was what it was like but…”

“You had visions and telekinesis. There were other kids. Other kids like you, touched by demons. You—fought your abilities. They didn’t. In the end it—it killed you, only for you to—whatever you do, don’t drink demon blood, Sammy,” Dean said, shuddering, a parade of recollections flicking by like shutter clicks behind his eyelids every time he blinked.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam continued. “But the point is, whatever it is, with special kids—it’s part of what’s after me. After us. I’ve felt you searching. I watched you being hypervigilant. And whatever it is that’s hunting us… It wants me to follow a vision, go to Michigan. But I don’t think we should.”

“Turn the tables, get away from the original path,” Dean murmured, thinking back to their earlier conversation. It had been his suggestion to try to break the cycle stop chasing their original footsteps. “Okay, so what do we do?”

“Research,” was Sam’s answer.

Dean picked up the one of the extra pillows on the other side of the bed and playfully swung it at Sam’s head. “Aw, come on, Sammy, you know I hate research.”

“Yeah, I know, but you’re actually good at it, and you’re the one with the knowledge locked up in your mind somewhere, and the potential to tell us how _not_ to make the same mistakes all over again.”

“You’ve got _visions_ ,” Dean taunted.

“Yeah, that I can’t control, that give me migraines, and are probably sent by some demon or demons unknown. I’ll help where I can, but we need to start taking what you remember and figuring out what it means.”

“I’m starting to regret asking you to tell me how you saved my ass,” Dean mused. 

Sam just pressed a kiss to his hair and pulled Dean closer to his chest. “No you don’t.”

“No I don’t,” Dean agreed.

~~~

So they set out for answers. Dodging visions left and right. Dean’s _memories_ , for lack of a better term, took them to Chicago, Wisconsin, and down to Texas. It had them skimming through rare books and occult collections at libraries and scouring the internet for search terms like “sigil of the daeva” and “the Key of Solomon.”

About two weeks in, they started getting calls from Dad… and dodging them. The calls became more frequent, more insistent, but just like Sam knew they shouldn’t follow his vision to Michigan, Dean knew that chasing after John would deliver them into the waiting arms of whatever it was that was out there, lurking, trying to tear them apart. They hunted where they could, putting down two vengeful spirits and ridding a house of an honest-to-god boggart along the way.

John’s messages were followed by messages from other hunters, some asking for help on projects, others passing on rumors about John. What had started out as their quest to find their father seemed to have taken an unexpected turn into avoidance, because everything their father and his friends asked them to do Dean knew in his gut would just throw them back in the path of their invisible stalker. So he gritted his teeth and pushed on, struggling against the constant voices of doubt and uncertainty and did what felt right, rather than what would make John happy. It seemed to go hand-in-hand with claiming Sam as his, and _that_ was okay with Dean.

They were doing pretty well with only fractured memories and migraine dreams to guide their search, until they circled back to Chicago again, following a lead on a book dealer who might have an original edition Sam was convinced would fill in some of the gaps in their knowledge. Frustrated and tired and starting to snipe at each other, they both agreed to take a break, not from each other, but from the research, the mission. And at Sam’s suggestion, they found themselves in a hipster sort of bar, a place way too pretentious for Dean’s tastes, where the whiskey wasn’t particularly good and the beer all suffered from an excess of hops. 

That’s when she showed up. Petite, slender, blonde, with eyes only for Sam.

~~~

**Chicago, Illinois–Late May 2006**

“Come on, Sam, why don’t you come with me?” the girl, _Meg_ , Dean remembered, said. 

There was something insistent, almost mocking in her tone that felt _wrong_. There was something too aggressive about her that didn’t sit right. When Dean looked at her, he felt something slick and slippery trying to slither into his mind. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it—wasn’t sure if she was actually doing something with telepathy and attempting to slink through his mind, or if it was a memory of what she was, what she _would_ do, but it was physically painful. He looked at her and he tasted blood and ash and sulfur. “Sam,” he managed, hand flying out to grab Sam’s their fingers entwined. 

“Meg, sorry, I’m working on something with my brother right now, and I’ve gotta stay a little longer,” Sam answered, slapping on his best placating-the-civilians smile. “Now’s not a good time. Maybe later? You could hang around a little longer and then we could all go back to California.”

Even as Sam talked Dean was shaking his head. Meg was bad news. No, she was worse than that. She was death and loss and damnation all wrapped up in pretty blond innocence. HIs mind was screaming screaming “danger, danger” even if he couldn’t figure out why. Dean’s fingers tightened around Sam’s as Sam shifted his body weight to put himself between Dean and Meg. He was _protecting_ Dean. It was exactly the kind of touchy-feely bullshit Dean that usually sent Dean running screaming, but right now it was a balm, oh-so-necessary protection from the greatest enemy they had faced so far.

“ _Brother_?” she asked, voice positively dripping with contempt and sarcasm. “That doesn’t look very _brotherly_.”

“Boyfriend,” Dean interjected.

“He’s my partner,” Sam said, squeezing Dean’s hand in reassurance. “Anyway, what’s it to you? What are you the homophobe police?”

Meg jerked as if struck. Dean had the distinct impression of a record skipping, a train jumping the tracks. She was two beings, two entities, and they fought, un-merged for a split second before syncing back up. “I just. Didn’t think you were like that. You said you were looking for your father. You left Cali in a rush because your girlfriend died.”

And okay, that hurt. Way to bring up the perpetual knife-to-the-gut, the embodiment of Dean’s fears and failures, the representation of four and a half years of separation, more than two years without any contact of any kind. Her eyes shifted to focus on him, and Dean could feel the censure there, every dark, lost, unworthy feeling he’d ever had about himself was being dragged to the fore.

But Sam hadn’t moved, and Meg hadn’t stopped talking. “What would Jess think of you—”

But Meg never finished her thought. Her voice just switched off mid-word like someone’d sucked all the air out of her lungs. 

“I never mentioned her name,” Sam said, voice like daggers promising death. His hand was outstretched, palm out, and Meg seemed frozen against it.

She twitched, not quite a movement, more like the idea of a movement, but that was all it took for Dean to see a wisp of black flutter over the white of her left eye, just barely visible over her lower lid. 

“Hu—” she breathed.

“Wrong timeline, bitch,” Dean said through gritted teeth. The future, or maybe the past, flashed before his eyes—Sam leaving, Sam bleeding, Meg driving a stake between them, Dad hurt, shadows slashing, Meg falling, Meg not dead, Meg taunting, death and loss and pain, and Meg-the-girl dying-bleeding-broken (Oh. _God_! There was nothing they could do to help), Meg murdering with Sam’s hands, Meg torturing and taunting, Meg stabbing. It all flashed behind his eyes in a giant rush. Someday she’d be almost a friend, an uneasy ally, after the end of the world, after death and the end of everything, before dying at the hand of an even bigger enemy. But before then... before them she was the wedge, the crack in their armor that set everything in motion. Precursor to the end of the world. Bringer of doom. The first _true_ harbinger of the apocalypse. With her, the balance shifted. With her, they would seal their own fate...

But she wasn’t moving.

And neither was Sam. 

“She’s a demon, Sam,” Dean realized realized aloud, his free right hand reaching back and freeing his 1911 from its holster.

“I know,” Sam said, his voice almost eerie with its calmness.

“Then you should know _that’s_ not going to do anything but kill poor, sweet Meg whose body I’m borrowing,” Meg said, glaring at the gun in Dean’s hand.

Dean’s aim didn’t waver. Instead he took a step back to better ground his stance. “It just might slow you down too.”

In front of them Meg seemed to tremble, vibrate, as curls of inky black smoke appeared around her nose and mouth.

“How are you?” she started, addressing Sam. “You shouldn’t be able to do this, not yet,” she protested, gasping as more and more smoke was pulled from her body.

“Tell that to your father,” Dean retorted, more pieces of the puzzle snapping into place.

“Maybe he should have thought of that before giving me the power to destroy him,” Sam added, _pushing_ out with his hand. 

“Can you?” Dean asked. Something flickered in his memory. That sounded right, but felt _wrong_ , like the memory of Sam tearing demons to pieces was hopelessly intertwined with pain and fear and loss.

“I think we’re about to find out.” Sam was starting to sweat. Dean could see a vein pulse in his temple, his jaw gritted against the growing strain. More smoke was flowing from Meg’s mouth, but It was coming more slowly now.

She was _fighting_ Sam.

Dean looked around for something, anything he could do to help. Months ago, before they’d been _them_ , on that godforsaken plane, what was the exorcism they’d used? But that wouldn’t help now. The exorcism let the demon manifest, affect the world on its own. That was the last thing they needed.

“Oh Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Meg shook her head, “the fun we could have had.”

For a moment Meg morphed before his eyes. A different woman, a different _host_ , he supposed, longer, darker hair, rounder features, a huskier voice, more playful, less bitter. Blink. She was there. Blink. She was gone. Meg was blonde and young and _whiny_ , but also _scared_... of Sam... of someone, or some _thing_ else. 

“Sam,” Dean prompted. He shifted his grip of Sam’s hand, but Sam was rigid with the strain.

“Ooh, you Sammy boy’s strong, Dean, bet you like that, don’t you?” she taunted, her voice now a mockery of seduction. “You like It when he holds you down and fucks you, opens up your tight hole with his big, strong, dick, don’t you.”

“Stop It!” Dean shouted, attention snapping back towards Meg.

“Oh you do like it, don’t you?” She pushed forward against whatever Sam was doing to hold her back. 

Dean could almost see It shimmer, the invisible barrier between them, as she pressed against it.

“I can smell it on you, all that lust mixed up with all that shame. I mean really, Dean, you used to change his diapers and now you suck his cock.”

“Shut up!” Dean yelled, finger twitching towards the trigger.

This time Sam moved. He let go of Dean’s hand and grabbed Dean around the wrist of the hand holding the gun. “Don’t. That’s what she wants.”

Dean let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, finger sliding safely back alongside the gun and away from the trigger. 

“I’m not ashamed,” Sam said, sparing Dean a glance.

Dean could see the certainty reflected In Sam’s eyes.

“Pity.” Meg was talking again. “I seem to remember you being so much more fun.”

“You’ve never met me,” Dean said, wondering if she got the same echoes he did.

“Oh, but I’ve watched you.”

“You’re just trying to distract me.”

“Actually,” she started only to break off and cough as more smoke was _pulled_ from her mouth. “I’m trying to distract Sammy here.” 

Dean looked back at Sam, who was still struggling, both hands now reaching out towards Meg. 

“That’s right, it’s not as easy as it looks, Is It? Every moment I stay in here, I can hurt her just a little more. Tear some tissue here, break a bone there, maybe snap her neck, cause an... an... aneurism—” she gasped.

Sam grunted.

Smoke was steadily rising from her open mouth, but Sam was looking all the worse for the wear. Dean watched in horror as blood began to drip from his right nostril, just a few drops at first then more, and more, coalescing into a steady stream.

Meg fought back again, seeming to _pull_ against Sam, tugging so hard this time, Sam wobbled on his feet. 

“Oh, you’d better kill me. I clawed my way out of hell for you once, If I have to do It again, I’m not gonna be so nice, especially not towards your precious little Dean.”

“Sam?” Dean asked.

“I can do it.”

But at what cost? Sam was growing paler by the second. _Think, Dean, think!_ Who did he know, who could help? Who knew anything about demons? 

“Bobby,” Sam whispered. “Uncle Bobby...

Dean wasted precious seconds as his brain struggled to shift gears and keep up with Sam’s apparent non sequitur, until it finally clicked. Uncle Bobby, Bobby _Singer_ knew about demons. He had some sort of trap, funky symbols from the _Key of Solomon_ or something on his living room ceiling. But would Bobby _help_ them? Last Dean could remember Bobby’d gotten raving mad and pissed at Dad. Would he even take a call from Dean? Hell, even If he would help, _could_ he? But Dean wasn’t going to pass up a possibility to try. He’d grabbed his phone with his free hand, and was already flipping through the contacts before he registered what he was doing.

“Who did your daddy piss off this time?” came the gruff voice on the other end of the line.

“Bobby?” Dean asked, voice hitching in his throat.

“Oh hell, Dean, what happened?”

Without pausing to catch his breath, Dean was stumbling through an explanation as best he could, skimming over the parts he didn’t yet believe or understand, like Sam’s visions and his own flashes of an alternate timeline and everything Missouri had told them about rewriting time—

—He entirely left out the developments in his relationship with Sam. 

Instead he focused on what they’d been able to piece together about Dad’s quest and Mom’s past and the demons that were targeting them. “She’s possessed, Bobby. Just some college kid and the thing that’s wearing her was trying to lure Sam away. Sam’s got her, he’s pulling the demon out of her, I think he could _kill_ her, the demon I mean, but she’s fighting him and its hurting Sam. I don’t know what to do.

“I hate to say this, Dean, but I’m pretty sure there’s no way to _kill_ a Demon,” came Bobby’s exasperated reply.

Dean caught Sam’s eye, saw the same certainty he felt echoed there even under the layers of obvious pain. But it Is, Bobby. I know It Is. Sam can do it, too... I just don’t know if he can do it right now. Without practice or anything, to help. Is there a trap? A symbol? A ritual or something we can use to imprison it until later?”

“Where are you?” he asked.

Dean had to think about that. “St. Louis? Chicago? I can’t remember right now.”

Bobby sighed. “I mean where are you? A house? A church? A dirt road?”

“In an alley outside a bar.”

“There are traps you can use, but you usually have to lure a demon into one.”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Sam gritted out, overhearing the conversation. 

“Did you hear that?” 

“That’s great, Sam, but unless you’ve got some spray paint handy and a ceiling over head, there’s much I know off the top of my head. Besides, I don’t think you want to leave a demon trapped in an alley.”

“So what, what do we do?”

“Send her back to hell,” Sam answered. HIs demeanor changed like a flipped switch. He stopped straining and _tugged_ on thin air with his bare hands, closing his right hand into a fist and yanking.

Meg’s eyes filled with Inky black going unnaturally wide In the split second before she was lifted up as If on Invisible strings, hovering about 2 Inches off the ground as her head snapped back and her jaw dropped. An Impossibly large plume of black smoke, crackling with purple electricity flowed out. It was easily ten times larger than the demon they’d faced back on the plane.

The smoke hung in the air for several seconds, twisting and roiling, struggling against Sam’s incorporeal grasp, Meg hovering in the air just beneath it. Then Sam squeezed his fist tighter and pulled his hands far apart. 

Dean watched in baffled awe as a large chunk of the cloud sheared off of the rest, burning yellow with sulfur before extinguishing into nothingness. The rest of the cloud flowed up and disappeared with a loud rush of noise. 

“Sam?” Dean asked, cell phone dangling limply from his fingers, already long forgotten. 

But Sam didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped his arms as he collapsed onto the asphalt, unconscious. HIs upper lip was now covered in blood, some of it dripping down and staining his shirt.

No sooner had Sam fallen than Meg dropped to the ground, hard.

~~~

“What—what hap—pened?” Sam’s voice cut through the monotonous drone of the Impala’s engine.

Most days Dean thought of his girl as roaring or purring. Right now the road noise was just another reminder of how far he had left to go. He’d been driving for four hours already.

He had at least another 6 to go (If he was lucky) before he could rest. Before he could _breathe_. He did his best to avoid the nagging voice In the back of his head telling him even then he would get no rest. No peace. They were coming for him now. Him and Sam and everyone they loved. There was no such thing as safety.

“Dean?” Sam asked, his voice a little louder, more coherent this time. “Where are we? Where’s Meg?” Sam pushed himself up in the seat and started to look around, craning his head over his shoulder as If to check and see Id maybe Meg—the host, not the demon—was in the back seat. Movement didn’t agree with Sam, and in a heartbeat, he was moaning, listing to one side apparently overcome with vertigo.

Dean’s right arm shot out and pinned Sam against the back of the seat. Under different circumstances, Dean would have felt guilty or embarrassed about mom-arming Sam. Now he just wanted to get from one miserable end to the other in one piece and avoiding further calamity along the way.

“Oh shit.” Sammy gaped and panted, for a few moments, Dean was convinced Sam was going to be sick all over the interior of the Impala, but it passed, leaving Sam shaking, propped against the passenger-side door, his breath frighteningly shallow. 

“We’re on our way to Bobby’s,” Dean explained. “I dropped Meg at the hospital before we left St. Louis. She was in pretty bad shape, but she was still alive. You—” he started “You were pretty out of It there for a while,” Dean added.

“How long?” Sam asked. 

“Been on the road for about four hours,” he explained. “Getting Meg to the hospital took a while.” All the while he’d been terrified someone would stop them, ask questions, decide Sam’s physical state was too suspicious. Even now, Dean was careful to keep his speed to the limit. The last thing he wanted was to attract the attention of some homophobic state trooper. 

 

“They’ll be coming for us,” Sam said.

“Yup.” That had been a foregone conclusion. Even If they’d managed to kill Meg outright, someone always would have come looking for her. 

“I wonder how long it will take.”

“You hurt her,” Dean said. “I didn’t know it was possible to hurt a demon, but you did it.” He spared a glance at Sam. HIs eyes were still bloodshot, upper lip streaked with clotted blood, complexion pale. Dena turned back to the road, headlights reflecting off the sign. “I don’t know If that will slow her down or make whomever she works for come at us that much harder, maybe both,” he shrugged. “But you bought us time, time we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

“I can kill them.”

“I know you can, Sam,” Dean agreed, squeezing Sam’s hand. He believed Sam, felt the certainty and rightness in those words.

—But he could also feel how close he was to losing Sam entirely. 

“I’ll do it,” Sam repeated.

Dean answered with a nod and grunt. He wasn’t scared about losing Sam to the _darkness within_ or anything like that. No, he was worried that Sam embracing his... abilities... would kill him. That Sam would be so earnest, so stubborn to defeat the demons at any cost that he’d get himself killed or die In the process of killing demons. (There was also that nagging feeling that while Dean had confidence In Sam, believed in him, trusted he wouldn’t go over to the dark side, Sam didn’t share that faith. Dean would do everything in his power to make Sam believe, convince him of his worth, but in the end it was Sam’s decision. Sam had always made up his own mind, about fighting with Dad, going to Stanford, breaking off their relationship, starting it back up again. And If Dean was honest with himself, he was afraid Sam didn’t love him enough to listen. Or, scarier still, that Sam loved him and thought he was making things better for Dean by sacrificing himself.)

“I won’t leave you,” Sam murmured as If reading Dean’s thoughts and promptly fell asleep just as suddenly as he’d awakened, leaving Dean alone with his thoughts, the night, and the feeling of doom that seemed to grow with each passing mile marker.

~~~

Singer Sales and Salvage stood alone at the end of a barely paved road on the outskirts of a small South Dakota town not that far from the Missouri river, an hour from I-90 and two hours from the Badlands. Its seemingly ancient wrought Iron gates and arch made it feel more like a cemetery than an auto shop, and in a way, that’s what it was, a cemetery for cars. 

But there was a lot more to the lonely looking farm house and its steel sentries than met the eye. Dean knew Bobby had a bit of a reputation around town for being crazy—town drunk and UFO freak rolled into one. But Bobby while Bobby was no teetotaler he rarely _drank_ , and as far as Dean knew he didn’t believe in UFOs.

Demons on the other hand... Bobby definitely believed in demons and all things supernatural, and if Dean’s memory was correct he also knew more about Demons than any other hunter out there—even Caleb and Pastor Jim—at least of the hunters Dean knew. Still a little bit of Dean’s plan was riding on he because neither Dad nor Bobby had ever let him do all that much wandering while they were at Bobby’s, and thanks to John Winchester’s tendency to push away anyone he got really close to... (Especially those who got really close), Dean hadn’t seen Bobby in almost 4 years. Still there had been a time when no one had been closer to Dad than Uncle Bobby, so much so that they’d spent months at a time—mostly summers, but a few times during the school year too—at Bobby’s house. Dean had looked up to Bobby, aspired to be a hunter like him, since it seemed a surefire way to earn Dad’s respect. 

Those sporadic months had also been the closest thing Dean had to feeling like he had a home. Bobby’s house—or rather the sprawling salvage yard behind it, was also the first place Sam had kissed him. This was the first place they’d had sex. 

Dean pulled the Impala to a quiet halt in next to Bobby’s front door and turned to Sam. “Sam? Sam, we’re here.”

Sam didn’t stir or even make a sound.

“Sam? Sammy?” Dean said again, shaking Sam’s shoulder, voice growing more Insistent every second Sam didn’t respond. 

The front door to Bobby’s house bolted open with a crack as the screen door bounced off the siding. Dean jolted and turned to see Bobby, clad in his familiar blend of denim, flannel, and a battered truckers cap, running down the steps, shotgun at the ready.

Dean raised his hands in surrender, “It’s me, Bobby. Dean Winchester.”

“Who’s with you?”

“Sam,” Dean said sneaking a look back at Sam, but keeping his hands raised. Sam still hadn’t stirred even with the racket from the door and Bobby’s shouting. The pit in Dean’s stomach grew a little darker and a whole lot deeper. 

“He possessed?” Bobby asked, approaching the Impala, but not lowering the shotgun an Inch. 

“What? No he’s not possessed!”

“Then why’s he not moving?” The gun was aimed squarely at Dean’s chest now. 

“I’m not possesses either. Sam’s hurt. He yanked a demon out of its host and wounded it. I think the rest went back to hell, but it fought Sam before it left. HIs nose was bleeding, then he collapsed. He’s been In and out ever since, but now I can’t wake him! He needs help. Please Bobby, help me, help Sam. What went down between you and Dad, I had nothing to do with It, Sam didn’t either.”

Now the shotgun barrel did twitch, but just a little. “You think this has something to do with me and your Daddy?” Bobby asked, shocked.

“Look, if you don’t want to help just say so—” and Dean _hated_ that he was asking for help. “I’ll take Sam somewhere else.” Where he didn’t know. “I came here because you know more about Demons than anyone else I know.” Dean clenched his jaw and tipped his chin defiantly.

“This has nothing to do war your Daddy and everything with not wanting to invite high level demons onto my property.” He glanced at Sam warily, then back at Dean. “Wait here.” Bobby backed away, all the way up the stairs and into his house, never turning his back on them or taking the shotgun off them the whole time. The door shut, more quietly this time, and silence descended once more.

Dean took the opportunity to check on Sam again. He was breathing, but slowly. The rise and fall of his chest looked pained, not peaceful like he was asleep. “Sammy, wake up, we’re at Bobby’s, come on Sam, Sam!” Dean shook Sam, but his head just lolled onto his shoulder when Dean poked him too hard. 

“Here.”

Dean jumped, heart pounding against his ribs. He’d been _this close_ to giving an incredibly undignified scream.

Bobby was standing next to the Impala’s driver’s side window holding an uncapped beer bottle, shotgun now slung across his chest. 

“What?” Dean asked not tracking. He was still trying to figure out he’d missed Bobby coming back out of the house and getting up next to him without hearing. Hell he hadn’t even had the familiar warning prickle on the back of his neck. If Bobby had been someone else... something else.

“How much sleep have you had, boy?” Bobby asked.

Dean blinked slowly.

“Don’t answer that, just drink this.” Bobby thrust the bottle towards the window. 

Dean rolled it down and complied, taking a long swig of what was actually a not half-bad microbrew. “Okay?” he asked, lowering the bottle.

Bobby leaned closer looking Dean over, eyes searching. “Well you’re not a demon.” He nodded at Sam. “Can’t say yet about him.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flask, opened it, and handed it to Dean. “Splash some of that on him, will you? If you can make him take a sip, all the better.”

“You want me to pour whiskey on Sam?”

“It’s not whiskey,” was all Bobby said.

Dean was too tired and freaked out to argue, and Bobby’s beer had seemed to be just fine, so he took the proffered flask and splashed its contents on Sam’s face. He’d hoped it might wake Sam up, but he didn’t even stir. 

“In his mouth too.”

Grudgingly, Dean pried open and poured the flask contents in, careful to make sure Sam didn’t choke. Much to his relief, Sam swallowed reflexively. It was the most pronounced sign of life he’d seen from Sam In hours.

“There. You satisfied?” Dean asked, running his fingers through some of the liquid that had splashed on Sam’s face and bringing his fingers to his lips. “Huh, tastes like water.” 

“That’s ‘cause it is water. Holy water. One of the fastest and surest ways to suss out a demon. It tends to get a _very_ noticeable reaction. Any demon short of maybe Lucifer himself, you pour holy water on him or, better yet, make him drink it, and you’ll know.” Bobby paused and held his hand out.

“Oh, the flask,” Dean realized, fumbling it, dropping it in his lap and soaking himself in the process. Hands still wobbly with fatigue, he passed it back to Bobby. “Guess you know I’m not a demon either now.”

Bobby just laughed and shook his head. “No, idjit, that’s what the beer was for.”

“You—you blessed the beer?”

Bobby shook his head more vigorously, a combination of exasperation and disapproval on his face. “No, Dean, I dosed it with holy water before passing it to you. Tends to make actual demons a lot less suspicious than handing them a flask of holy water and telling them to drink.” He nodded at Sam. “Help me bring him inside?”

Sam was tall, so tall, all limbs and muscle, heavy and difficult to carry. The whole way out of the Impala, up the steps, and into the house, Dean worried he was going to hurt Sam, smack his too-long flailing limbs into something and make the situation worse. But bobby had his head and shoulders and managed to keep Sam from getting too banged up. 

Inside, Dean tried to maneuver Sam towards the sofa, but Bobby steered them clear of the furniture and into a clear spot In the middle of the room. Bobby started to set Sam down.

“What are you doing?” Dean demanded. 

Bobby looked up.

Dean followed, seeing the complex circular sigil full of Images and symbols and writing he didn’t understand or recognize painted on the ceiling over where Bobby was trying to place Sam.

“Key of Solomon,” Bobby supplied. “It’s a trap for demons. Get them into the sigil they can’t get out, well not unless they can break It somehow.” He smiled at Dean, lowering Sam to the floor. “Think of it like a demonic roach motel.”

Dean couldn’t quite suppress the shudder that ran through him. Still, Bobby was letting go of Sam, and Dean didn’t want to add to Sam’s distress, so he grudgingly let go of Sam’s legs, gently lowering him to the floor. “So why are we putting Sam in it?” Dean asked. 

Bobby looked up at him warily. “I know there’s no demon In Sam right now, but I don’t know how long It’s gonna stay that way, especially If Sam’s going around yankin’ demons outta hosts. You boys ain’t exactly protected against possession, and if some demonic sonofabItch shows up to take advantage of Sam’s weakness, I’d prefer they did It In a context where we have some control.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Dean proclaimed, stepping into the circle and settling on the floor next to Sam. HIs back ached with the strain of sitting upright without support after an agonizingly long drive, but he felt better just being closer to Sam.

“Oh _hell_ ,” Bobby exclaimed. Taking In the way Dean had sidled up to Sam and was gently laying Sam’s head and resting It In his lap. “So Sam finally pulled his head out of his ass and you two go back together, huh?”

“How did you—”

“Oh I always knew,” Bobby protested. “Where did you think Sam, bookworm Sam, got all his condoms?” 

Dean blushed beet red.

“Does your Daddy know?” Bobby asked.

“I don’t know, and It’s probably better If he never—”

“Oh, he knew,” Bobby said, his voice slipping towards bitter. “It was one of our longer running arguments. He kept getting hung up on the ostensible biology of it, and Ignoring the bigger picture, like the utter futility of keeping two soulmates apart, not to mention how immoral that would be.”

“Soul mates?” Dean asked.

“I can’t be the first person to have told you about that?”

“You’re not,” Dean admitted. “I just don’t know what it’s supposed to mean.”

“It means you’re soul mates. Two halves of a whole. Each other’s perfect match,” Bobby explained. “Now come on, tell me what happened.”

So Dean did. He talked about dad going missing, talking Sam Into going with him, Jess’s murder, Sam’s nightmares, then his visions, then his own dreams—memories—feeling more and more like he was living In some constant state of flux, fighting with Sam, going to Missouri and learning the truth, the mysterious Meg, everything they’d done to try to figure out that mess, Sam holding her, exorcising her, and wounding her without touching her. He let the words sink in, tried to supply as much Information as possible.

~~~

“Do you want to talk about it?” Bobby asked as he helped Dean set Sam down on the bed.

“No,” Dean said, shaking his head, but his eyes didn’t move from Sam. The blood was cleaned from his face, and his face was relaxed in sleep, no hint of pain or fear showing. But he was too still. Sam had always tossed and turned as a kid. He kicked and stole covers. Even as an adult, Dean marveled at all the little grunts and noises Sam would make as he moved around in bed, never waking himself up. Sam tended to glom onto his sleeping partners too. It wasn’t _snuggling_ exactly (and that wasn’t just Dean’s discomfort with the word talking), Sam just kind of... asserted his possession of his partner. It had kept Dean awake for hours the first time they’d shared a bed after getting back together, but by the second night it had been a source of comfort, security, even If Sam did keep trying to put himself on the side of the bed closest to the door. 

Now... Now Sam didn’t even twitch as Dean’s hands left his body. So deep was Sam’s sleep he didn’t seem to know anyone else was there.

“No?” Bobby was talking again, his words intruding on Dean’s contemplation. “I think you _need_ to talk even if you’re not in the mood.”

Anger flared In Dean so fast he had spoken and acted before he was even aware of thinking about It. “You think? _You_ think?” he demanded, turning on Bobby, fist raised. “We have bigger problems don’t you think than you telling me how sinful I am or how much I’m corrupting him. I came here because Sam Is hurt and in trouble and I don’t know how to help. We’re being hunted by something so big and complex I don’t understand. I find out half the shit I believed isn’t true and oh yeah, apparently time travel is real and somehow I’m supposed to fix everything, but I don’t know how. I just want to keep Sammy safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do is keep him safe, but no matter how hard I try, I fuck up. I just keep fucking up. And you said you’d help, but Instead all you do Is try to talk me out of the one good thing In my life—”

The slap surprised Dean more than hurt, and he spluttered, hand flying to his cheek to touch the suddenly reddened, heated skin. He was breathing hard and shaking and his throat hurt from yelling and beside him Sam made a tiny grunting sound and shifted, just enough to show he was still in there, still had some awareness of the outside world. In that moment Dean felt so guilty and ashamed he wanted to die or hide or...

But Bobby was speaking again, and his words weren’t what Dean expected to hear.

“For all the— Dean snap out of It, pull yourself together. I’m not your Daddy, you idjit. I’m not trying to tear you down or hurt you or Sam. Jesus, why do you think I kicked your Daddy out In the first place? John Winchester was a short-sighted, self-centered ass when he wanted to be then, and as far as I know he’s just become an even bigger one.” Bobby had taken Dean by the right arm and was leading him, actually more pulling him out of the bedroom and down the hall. 

Dean allowed himself to be led, his left hand still pressed absently to his left cheek, grounding on the warmth of his skin there. It was so real... like a tether to sanity reaching through the surreality that surrounded Dean at every turn. 

“Sit,” Bobby commanded, prodding Dean Into one of the arm chairs in his downstairs study. 

Dean wasn’t really sure how they’d gotten there, he didn’t remember walking down the stairs or even moving really. 

“Now when was the last time you slept?”

“I don’t know,” Dean answered honestly. He tried to think back, but the effort just made his head throb.

“Figures,” Bobby scoffed, dropping into the chair across from Dean. “You know what Sam did, whatever he did to those demons, that’s his Idea of protecting _you_ , because that’s all he ever wanted to do. For that matter, your idjit of a father usually thought he was protecting you too... he just could never seem to put that above his own vendetta or his... discomfort with reality.”

Dean rubbed his aching temples. “What do you mean?”

“Did your daddy ever tell you he knew you two were soul mates or that he’s known it was a high-order Demon that killed your momma and has known since about the time you turned five?” Bobby began his story.

~~~

The relative peace and quiet of Bobby’s didn’t last long.

It was about 5:00 a.m. the next morning when Bobby knocked on the door to Sam and Dean’s room rousing Dean from a half-slumber.

Instinct and hair-trigger reflexes had Dean sitting bolt upright and throwing himself over Sam’s still-sleeping form, shielding him, before he registered what was going on. He turned sleepy eyes towards the door, which was now open a crack, and squinted. “Bobby?” he asked. It was still dark outside, and Sam… well Sam was still sleeping (maybe) or unconscious (probably), eyes bloodshot, body limp with exhaustion from the day before. Whatever had brought Bobby to their door couldn’t be good.

“I just got a rather unsettling call,” Bobby admitted, staying on the other side of the door, steadfastly protecting Sam and Dean’s privacy.

“Come in,” Dean mumbled, sitting up, careful not to disturb Sam. 

“Five minutes ago, my cell phone rings. It’s a hunter named Rufus Turner, I’m not sure if your daddy ever mentioned him to you?”

Dean shook his head. 

Bobby muttered something under his breath that looked like “figures,” and continued. “He’s a recluse. Paranoid. Typically works alone. Well, three days ago, he got a call from another hunter, man named Daniel Elkins, said your daddy had showed up on his property, raving about demons, busted into his gun cabinet, and made off with an heirloom colt revolver.”

“Why would Dad steal some hunter’s gun?” Dean wondered aloud.

“Well that’s where it gets… interesting. See this gun’s been in Elkins’ family since the 1800s. There’s a legend about an old Colt revolver with special powers. Gun that could kill a demon, or any other supernatural beast you throw at it. Most folks believe it’s a load of bullshit. A myth.” Bobby’s frown suggested he had been one of those to dismiss the legend, at least until recently. “Then again, most people woulda said demons are rare and there’s no such thing as time travel.”

Dean swallowed hard, struggling around the lump of pure dread that had sprung up in his throat. He reached reflexively for Sam’s hand, and tangled their fingers together, Sam stirring just enough to squeeze back.

“Thing is, your Daddy’s been after this gun before. Elkins said he’d confronted him about it, denied it. Elkins knew the gun’s history, but only half-believed the stories. But you see, now he tells Rufus this gun was stolen once before, back in 1973 by a man who was about 6 feet tall, sandy hair, bit scruffy ‘round the edges. Said he was a hunter. He ‘borrowed’ the gun for a few days and left it with a family of hunters, in Kansas, _Lawrence_ Kansas.”

The pit of trepidation grew deeper as Dean felt himself go numb.

“A family named the Campbells.”

“Mom—” Dean began and broke off. He’d never known mom’s family. She’d always been “Mary Winchester” as long as he’d been alive. Her parents were long dead, far as he knew, they’d never had any grandparents, but he’d heard his dad calling her by her maiden name. Mary Campbell… But Mom wasn’t a hunter. Dad wasn’t a hunter until Mom died. So how—?

“Gets a bit weirder, I’m afraid. See Elkins never saw this mystery hunter again, but after seeing your dad, he seems to think there’s a family resemblance.”

“It was me,” Dean murmured, realizing aloud. 

“What?” Bobby asked.

“He said—” Dean broke off collecting his thoughts. _One cannot change time, but it can be overwritten… Your new timeline superimposed on the old… Everything that happened before will still happen. All the time travel that already took place will still take place, even though the you in the new timeline will not be there to do it._ Kronos’s voice echoed in his head, and an image, a young Daniel Elkins, the Colt, a mission… The afterimage flashed through his mind. “Kronos said the time travel that had already happened would still happen, even if I—the new me—wasn’t there to do it.” He explained what he’d pieced together from his flashes of memory, what Missouri had told him.

“Well do you remember what the future alternate version of you was doing back in 1973 with a mysterious magical gun allegedly owned by Samuel Colt himself?” Bobby asked, disbelieving.

“No,” Dean said, but even as he said it, he nodded, ghosts of memories floating in his consciousness, bringing tears to his eyes. “I mean, yes. I think. I was trying to stop him. Stop the Demon, before… before he made a deal… the deal that killed Mom.”

Bobby raised one eyebrow. “Well, that’s great, although I’m assuming it didn’t work then or now, or we wouldn’t be in this situation. Thing is, Elkins was so suspicious, he convinced Rufus to go follow John, see what he was up to. But not before he called Jim Murphy and a half-dozen other hunters and told him what he’d seen. 

“Now this got them all very suspicious. So Rufus found your daddy in Florida. Says he was staking out some family. They had a baby, about to be six months old…”

Dean’s heart sank, and his stomach flipped, he could see where this was going, feel it, even without the flickers of memory that rushed through his mind with every new word from Bobby. 

“24 hours later, John tries to kill a man with yellow eyes with the Colt, only not before the house bursts into flames and the baby’s mother gets gutted and pinned to the ceiling. The man with yellow eyes vanished, got away. But that wasn’t the only thing that happened. See, the man with yellow eyes cut himself before he gutted the mother. He cut himself and fed his blood to the baby.”

“No,” Dean murmured, squeezing Sam’s hand tighter. Only deep down, he knew it was true. The demon blood… that was the source of Sam’s… powers… well part of it anyway. He knew there was more, somehow, but he wasn’t sure what. “No, it can’t—” he repeated, protesting, but the words died on his lips.

“That’s not all. Rufus wasn’t the only hunter Elkins called. There were others. And at least two of them also followed John to Florida. They saw enough to know…”

Dean’s fists clenched and he gritted his teeth. Beside him Sam whimpered as the clasp of Dean’s hand in his turned painful. “Oh shit, sorry, Sam, I’m sorry,” Dean whispered, wiping his free hand over Sam’s brow, smoothing away the lines of pain that had appeared on his forehead. “Did they see?” he asked Bobby. “Did they see the demon feed the baby blood?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Your daddy wasn’t going to do anything to the baby. But one of the other hunters, Gordon Walker, he managed to get his hands on the child, smothered him with a pillow. The baby’s dead. And from the sounds of it, Walker put two and two together. He knows the stories about your mom’s death. Knows why John got into hunting.”

“He’s coming after Sam,” Dean said with certainty.

Bobby nodded. “Took a shot at your daddy too. Didn’t like the idea John had been harboring a demon half-breed for the last twenty-some years.”

“Is he?” Dean asked, swallowing again, his stomach twisting in a new way as he thought about losing his father. John may have rejected him along with Sam, all-but disowned him for ‘fucking his baby brother,’ but no matter how much pain or fear or suffering he’d suffered at John’s hands, the man was still his father, and the thought of some… bigot erasing him from the universe was too much to bear.

“John got hit, but he’s still alive. Stubborn bastard. Woulda been on his way back here, most likely—never known even a serious wound to keep him down, but the local authorities managed to swoop in on the end of the shit show and they arrested him. According to Rufus some hot shot fed recognized a pattern of women dying mysteriously in house fires, and he’d caught sight of your dad near one too many of those fires.”

“He pulled Dad’s police records, knows he was questioned in Mom’s death. Found out about the warrants,” Dean realized. Because of course John Winchester’s decision to flee with his young sons after all-but abandoning them to neighbors for the better part of a year while apparently batshit crazy over his wife’s mysterious death had alerted the authorities. They’d all been fugitives as kids. Hell, if there’d been such a thing as an Amber alert in the early 80s they would have been screwed. As it was they were lucky John hadn’t had any closer ties or their faces very well could have wound up on milk cartons.

“Yes,” Bobby was answering.

“Well shit.” 

“I wish that was the worst of it,” Bobby continued.

“What the hell does that mean?” Dean asked. 

“Rufus is in Florida, trying to figure out how to bust John out without attracting too much attention. Kept going on about what sort of nightmare hellhole the Florida penal system is. But while he was scoping out the secure wing of the county hospital he got another call, this one from Jim Murphy. Turns out Walker approached him, all but stormed the church during Sunday evening services, he was looking for a place John might have stashed you, places you might hole up. Well, apparently before Jim realized the… demonic implications he started venting about how you two had taken to sin. It sounds like he couldn’t decide if he was more upset you and your brother were committing sodomy or incest, but apparently he did a fair amount of venting…”

“And now Gordon knows we’re together,” Dean understood.

“And he thinks you’re about as unnatural as your brother for well, being with him,” Bobby explained. “And Jim told him—”

“He’s after me too,” Dean said, looking down at Sam, fear flooding through him. 

Bobby didn’t answer, but crossed his arms. “Jim told him places you might go. Rufus figures Walker and his buddies will be on their way here, if they’re not already. They’ve had 15 hours, and apparently they already checked with Joshua, Jefferson, Caleb, your Dad’s more frequent allies.”

“So now they’re checking to see if his abominable kids are hiding out at his ex’s.” 

Bobby shot him a crooked smile. “You don’t have to be so blunt about it, kid. I wasn’t sure—”

“You and Dad were never all that good at hiding it, especially not when you were fighting. It really pissed Sam off when he figured out.”

Bobby frowned.

“Not because he disapproved, because he thought…” Dean bit his lip. Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t have said this. Four months ago, he wouldn’t have even let himself form the thought. “Dad was a hypocrite for his double standards.”

“You boys know I love you like you were my own, no matter what your idjit father’s got himself up to, right? You know the reason we fought—”

“Was because of us? Of me and Sam, or me-and-Sam together.” Dean looked down at their intertwined fingers and sighed.

“Not in a bad way, and that was only part of it. I didn’t exactly appreciate the hypocrisy either, and well… It was hard for me to accept at first, what you two were becoming, but I could see the whole soulmate thing, and I understood that you’re both special. You need each other. Complete each other. You’re far more together than the sum of your parts. So I got over it, manned up and opened my mind. But John just—” Bobby shook his head. “He couldn’t see past the end of his own nose. And he couldn’t see that he was hurting you, hurting himself, driving you apart and blaming you for it. Or he could see and he just didn’t care. And _that_ , I couldn’t abide. There’s enough death and misery and loneliness and suffering in this universe. We don’t need to go borrowing any more. But John couldn’t let well enough alone, and he couldn’t abide you two being happy together. Kept insisting it would make you soft.”

A memory flashed before Dean’s eyes. Pain. Loss. Confusion. He was in a hospital bed, John was standing over him. Dean should be dead, but it was John who was about to die, and even though Dean hadn’t remembered, hadn’t understood at the time it had happened, he’d known, deep down, what was going on. John leaning over. Whispering to him. _You have to save Sam. Or you have to kill him._ Flash of afterimage and it was gone, but he could live forever in that moment and never escape. It felt like a hundred years ago, and but it hadn’t happen yet. Wouldn’t have happened for months if he hadn’t gone back and changed things. It hurt, but for the first time, he understood. There had been no way the first time around, but now, with the benefit of hindsight and time travel and perspective. “He’s afraid of Sam… afraid for him, but also afraid of him. He doesn’t understand that one thing—it doesn’t define him. And together we’re… More.” Dean’s eyes tickled misting over. In all the world, only one thing could make him cry. _Sam._

“Well, whatever John’s thoughts. I could see how they were backfiring. But he… wouldn’t. And now he’s stuck in a jail in Florida. And they… They’re coming for you.”

“They’re coming for you too,” Dean murmured. “Bobby, you’ve done enough for us. I can’t… I can’t let you get hurt defending us.”

“Bullshit. You can’t let or make me do anything. You’re family. I’m not gonna let some crazed hunter yahoos with more balls than sense take a shot at you or Sam not while I’m still breathing. You’ve already got more than enough on your hands what with demons chomping at your heels and whatever else is out there. I’m not abandoning you and I won’t cast you out. As long as I’m breathing, I’m on your side. So you’re just gonna have to put on your big girl panties and deal with it. You’re not alone, Dean.”

“Then what do I do? I can’t—Sam isn’t strong enough. I can’t move him. Not yet. And we can’t stay here. I don’t know this Gordon Walker, but I know his type.”

“I thought John tried to keep you away—”

“He did,” Dean agreed, nodding. “For a long time he did. But…” Dean shrugged. “I grew up. Hell, I turned 27 in January. Somewhere in there, Dad stopped protecting me. It was… after Sam left. He sorta—hunting was everything and he knew I had fun doing it, but he changed. He didn’t have you. He didn’t have Sam. He was still obsessed with finding the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and he pushed me away. I got my own solo hunts and sometimes there were other hunters. Zealous. Religious. Bigoted. Pick an adjective… I’ve seen it.” He blinked, looked at Sam, blinked again, looked back at Bobby, who was still in the doorway. “That kind of hatred is impressive when it’s turned on a vengeful spirit, but against a human? A person? Someone I love?” He shuddered. “Bobby, I think they’re more dangerous than the Demons.

“You might be right. But that doesn’t mean I’m gonna cast you out into the street.”

“Then what?”

“I think I might have a place you can hide.”

~~~

As the Impala bumped and jostled its way down the narrow dirt path, Dean couldn’t block the urge to keep looking over his shoulder. It was only a matter of time, he kept reminding himself. Only a matter of time and _they’d_ find him and Sam.

He wasn’t sure if _they_ was the hunters or the demons, or maybe both, but whichever and whomever they were, they were coming. 

And it was definitely wishful thinking that they’d take each other out. 

No if Winchester luck held, and why the hell wouldn’t it, they’d get attacked by demons and hunters at the same time and the fuckers would gang up on them. 

Pulled from his bitterness by the sound of Sam’s whimper as the Impala drove over a particularly large root. _Sorry baby,_ he thought, patting the steering wheel in reassurance. He didn’t want any harm to come to the Impala any more than he wanted harm to come to Sam. Problems was, harm and trouble seemed to have their sights locked on them both.

Sam moaned again, he was stirring now. He’d woken for about fifteen minutes that morning, staying conscious long enough to shower (with Dean’s help) and get bundled up into the car, while Bobby gave Dean directions and helped him load supplies. 

Dean had his doubts whether the plan would work or just ensure they died faster and alone.

Then again, if the universe was going to take them out, it was probably better that it happen far from a populated area deep in the woods where there would be no collateral damage. No innocents would get caught up in this war. A part of Dean that seemed convinced there was no hope almost wished the end would come and come quickly.

The rest of him, the part that had taken Missouri’s words to heart, who was filled with awe every time Sam smiled at him, rebelled against the thought of losing, giving up, giving in. There _had_ to be away to get through this, to find a new future, one that didn’t end in death or doom or the apocalypse, or whatever the demons were planning.

“Where are we?” Sam asked, his voice scratchy and rough, as he blinked and stretched on the seat beside Dean. He’d curled in on himself as he’d slept, folding his impossibly tall frame into a tiny ball, leaning collapsed against the door for support. As he woke he shifted, sliding across the seat back until he was more or less slumped against Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean looked down and pressed a quick kiss to the crown of Sam’s head before turning his focus back to the rutty path. “We’re about three miles from Bobby’s cabin, if this damn GPS is telling the truth.”

“Bobby’s cabin?” Sam asked confused, trying to sit up, but failing. He mostly just half-raised his head and blinked around at everything. In the early afternoon light, dappled as it passed through the branches and evergreen boughs, Sam looked young, too young, like he could have still been the gangly teenager who came onto Dean, kissed him for the first time. 

But that Sam had lived a thousand lifetimes ago. A million fights before. And this Sam was… struggling under the weight of his legacy, his destiny.

“What do you remember?” Dean asked.

“Hurting the demon. Bobby’s house. Chaining the demon up in the devil’s trap. Killing it. Then… nothing?” Sam asked uncertainly.

“That was three days ago, Sam,” Dean answered worriedly.

“It’ll come back to me,” Sam said, almost resigned.

“Why, don’t you want it to—”

“I had another vision.”

“Oh,” Dean said, words suddenly fleeing him. He kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, careful of the turns, easing the Impala over the worst of the bumps and potholes, listening, afraid to pry.

Sam had seen the baby in Florida. Had seen their father and the others there. Saw John get shot and arrested… heard the words Gordon and the other hunters had to say about Sam.

“It’s true, you know,” Sam said.

“What’s true?” Dean asked, although deep down, he already knew the answer.

“I have demon blood in me. I’m not… I’m not human, Dean.” Sam’s words were suddenly strong, defiant.

Dean glanced aside to look at Sam, found his gaze focused and steady for the first time in too long. Sam looked like he was daring Dean to reject him, disown him, take back his confessions of love.

“I don’t care.” And Dean found he meant the words and every foreseeable implication.

“How can you not—you were trained to hunt—”

“I don’t care what I was trained to do, I know what I know and that is you’re the same person now, today, as you always have been at _least_ since you were six months old and anyone you were before that, I don’t care. You’re still my brother. You’re still my _Sam_. I raised you. I fell in love with you, because you’re steadfast and dedicated and noble and true at heart. Whatever that demon blood was supposed to do, I don’t care, because all you’ve ever been is strong and kind and committed to doing the right thing, whether it’s standing up for puppies or speaking your mind about not killing everything just because it’s supernatural. You see beauty and value everywhere, Sam. You see the best in people. You make me want to be a better man. You’ve been inspiring me since I was a little kid. That’s not evil. That’s _good_. I have no idea what makes you so good, whether it’s demon blood or human blood or loss or hope or your upbringing, but you have a capacity to see the world differently no matter how inconvenient that may be. So, I say, so what about some demon blood. It gives you the power to gank demons. Not banish them, or exorcise them, or give them a slap on the wrist, but utterly destroy them. How is that bad?

“Because I have visions of horrible things? Because they want me for their plan?” Sam protested.

“Bullshit! I made a choice. At some point in the future, I made a choice to come back and do this over. Do it _right_ , and from what I can tell, you and me together, that’s the key. So I don’t care what some fucking hunter or demon thinks. I know who you are, Sam. I _love_ you. I’ve been _in love_ with you since I was fifteen years old. That’s not gonna change. So stand with me. Let’s figure this out, together.”

“You really mean that,” Sam marveled.

“Yes, I do.” Dean sighed, smacking his right hand against the steering wheel in frustration. “I just wish we could figure out a way for you to use your… _powers_ and not melt your brain.

“I have an idea about that,” Sam answered, a smile spreading over his face. “That is, if my, um, demonic tendencies haven’t turned you off the idea of sex.”

“Heh,” Dean snorted. “Don’t get me wrong, Sam, I absolutely want to have sex with you. I’m just not sure, right now, you’re exactly… up for it,” he said, cringing at the unintended pun.

Sam didn’t seem to care, he just pushed himself up in the seat. “Actually, I think now I _need_ sex more than ever. There’s supposed to be some key to us being together that lets us change things, right? We know we’re some kind of, soul mates. We know that being together makes it harder for them to manipulate us. Well, what if—I dunno, healing through the power of love?” Sam glanced away.

“That’s cute, Sam.”

“Worked for Harry Potter.”

“Are you actually comparing yourself to—”

“Boy wizard?” Sam answered.

Dean just laughed.

“I think there’s some similarities… he had powers that some people thought were dark, he had a nemesis that killed his mom and wanted to destroy the world. Everyone thought he was their fucking pawn, but he had the power of love, and something like that. We don’t know how the story ends… I don’t know, maybe it’s a bad comparison.”

“I have a feeling it may be better than you think,” Dean admitted, flickers of memory making themselves known. He took in Sam’s appearance, tired, young, bags under his eyes, but for the first time since Jessica’s death, Sam didn’t look haunted. He looked _at peace._ “Okay,” Dean said at last, letting out a nervous sigh. “We’ll give it a try, but only if we’ve made this place as safe as we can and if as far as we can tell the coast is clear.”

They arrived at the cabin about two minutes later, just as the sun was starting to dip toward the horizon. In the woods it would get darker, faster, and for a brief moment, Dean stood beside the Impala, transfixed. Another time. Another cabin. His father’s eyes glowing yellow. Dean, tormented and broken, his organs crushed, lung collapsing, blood pouring from his mouth, knowing deep down he was already dead (dying), but begging for Sam not to kill their father, not to shoot the demon wearing their father’s skin. It had cost them… everything. It had set something in motion that he couldn’t quite see and wasn’t sure he wanted to remember. It was a memory of his other life. Hadn’t happened yet, didn’t have to come to pass. But the thought of it, sent a chill through his bones to his very soul.

“Hey.” Sam’s hand pressed warm and alive against Dean’s, squeezing. “Whatever you’re seeing, wherever you are. We can still change that. Be here, with me.”

Dean nodded and got to work. Unloading their meager gear from the Impala took no time at all. Being on the run, they’d left or misplaced some of their more nonessential items at random hotels. Nothing irreplaceable, but as a result, their bags were smaller and easier to unload.

When the last of their regular gear was inside, Dean insisted that Sam sit on the couch, wrapped in blankets, and rest. Sam didn’t protest, and Dean realized Sam was humoring him, somewhat grudgingly, but he would take it. It was terrifying enough to leave Sam alone even for the minutes it would take to set their first line of defense, while Sam was still looking so vulnerable. But Sam still needed the rest, and they couldn’t chance leaving themselves unprotected even for a moment. Letting their guard down at a time like this was a surefire way to get them killed.

So Sam sat, patiently while Dean took the industrial-size bag of rock salt out of the Impala’s back seat, slit it open at the corner, and trickled out a thick ring all the way around the cabin.

When that was done, Dean paused, considering, and made a ring around the Impala then laid down more salt lines connecting the two circles. Still feeling like that wasn’t enough, he made a second ring inside each of the first connected by more lines until the car and house looked like the targets of two irregular bull’s-eyes.

~~~

The confrontation began more or less as they expected. They got a tip-off from Bobby about 30 seconds before their cell signal mysteriously cut out. Considering there were repeaters stashed all over the mountainside and the weather was relatively good, it reeked of foul play.

About a minute after that, they couth sight of human shapes lurking in the shadows outside. One matched the picture of Gordon Walker that Bobby had shown them. Just when it looked like he and his buddies (of which there were at least ten), were going to sabotage the supernatural defenses and make a frontal assault on the cabin, a black cloud descended from everywhere at once.

“Holy shit,” Dean murmured, “are those Demons?” But he knew the answer even before the black cloud inevitably resolved into multiple distinct clouds, half of which dove at the building, looking for cracks in the armor, while the other half swarmed the hunters. About half of those were successful in possessing their unwilling (and unwitting) hosts, while the other half were rebuffed, probably by anti-possession spells or amulets on some of the more savvy hunters, including Gordon.

One of the hunters, not possessed, drew a gun and shot one of the possessed hunters. All it took was 30 seconds and bullets were flying. As the demons and hunters faced off against each other and both tried to assault the cabin.

Dean was screaming, trying to find cover, but the bullets were flying and the walls were thin. He found a defensible corner and holed up with the salt gun and a book of exorcism rituals and started chanting.

Sam just stood his ground. Center of the cabin, facing the onslaught, eyes intently focused, he reached out with his right hand and _pulled_ like he had with Meg, only this time, Dean watched as a black cloud was ripped from a man’s throat and disintegrated into a puff of yellow sulfur and ash. A minute later, part of the cloud swarming the building flashed yellow and disappeared. It happened again and again and again. Sam was bleeding from his nose, a bullet from one of the hunters’ guns grazed his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. 

If he could just hold on a little longer, if Dean could just avoid getting shot a little longer, they might make it. They were down to one or two demons and two hunters, Gordon and another man who seemed to be his buddy. But Sam was wavering where he stood. The demons were sparking, but they weren’t yet dead, and Gordon was on the move.

Then, just when it looked like Sam might collapse, the building was bathed in a flash of blinding, white light, and then it was gone. The demons and hunters were gone too. Vanished. No trace or sign.

The evening was eerily quiet with the sudden silence after unnatural crackling of demonic electricity and the rapport of guns.

It took Dean a moment to realize there was someone else there. A figure stood in the center of the Key of Solomon inked on the floor. He was smiling, cocksure and cocky, and though he was a complete stranger, on some level Dean knew him.

“Thought you two could use the help,” the figure said.

“Goddamnit,” Dean muttered as the afterimage flickered through his mind and politely informed him this was none other a trickster, or possibly an angel… which was, well not something that was supposed to exist.

“Who are you?” Dean asked, even though he was pretty sure he could figure it out, storming over and pushing Sam out of the way.

“Hey!” Sam protested, wincing as Dean brushed his injured arm. 

Dean froze, not wanting to hurt Sam, but at the same time, struck by how much _better_ Sam looked than he had just moments before. Although his arm was still sluggishly bleeding, the blood dripping from his nose was gone, and his color was much better. Sam looked steady on his feet, not like he might keel over at any moment. He still looked a bit feverish, but that was healthier than he’d appeared since that stupid bar in Chicago. Satisfied that Sam was okay, “Stay out of this, Sammy,” Dean warned, his voice dropping almost an octave and taking on that threatening growl that in another time—another timeline—was a signal to all that Dean was both extra dangerous and just pissed off enough to be susceptible to the right kind of carefully targeted digs and manipulation. 

In the here-and-now, Sam just rolled his eyes. 

“Don’t ‘Sammy’ me. This is _about_ me. You may have done the magic impossible travel thing, but in case you haven’t noticed, the last three places we’ve been, everyone and everything is after me. Ghosts and demon and hunters—other fucking _hunters_ shot me. And we’re on their side!” Sam jabbed at the air with his finger for effect, his frustration showing in his deeply furrowed forehead and the extra flush of pink that had come to his already fever-tinged cheeks. “I wanna know what he knows. And we don’t _time_ for you to do your best Vic Mackey on our... guest.”

“Who?” Dean asked, pausing in confusion.

“Vic—he’s a dirty cop, on the Sh—never mind.” Sam shook his head.

Dean starred, stopped, did a double take towards Sam, as if waiting to see if he would be interrupted again, before turning back to their captive with his hand raised.”

“You don’t want to hit me,” the trickster said as Dean’s open hand fell against his cheek with a resounding smack.

“Oh I don’t?” Dean asked.

The trickster didn’t flinch from the blow, but did turn his head to the side, pausing to spit blood before turning back to Dean, and smiling, his lip morphing from split to healed and unmarred as he did so. “No, you don’t because it’s a waste of time you don’t have, and it’s not gonna get you anywhere.” 

Dean couldn’t hide the flinch at those words. Panic was rising in his throat, his heart beating faster and faster, throwing itself against his ribs as if it intended to break free and run far, far, away, and all the while his lungs squeezed tighter, choking him, making all but impossible to breathe. Teeth grinding, fists clenched, he straightened up, sucker in as much air as he could, and gritted out, “Oh yeah, well I’m feeling pretty highly motivated right about now. Trust me, I’ll figure out something that works.”

“No you won’t,” the trickster retorted.

Dean felt his fist clenching, but Sam grabbed his hand and held on with both of his, stopping Dean in his tracks.

“Then again, you don’t need to. You just need to start asking the right questions, like—”

“ _What_ are you?” Sam finished for him.

The trickster smiled. “See Sammy gets it.”

That remark earned Sam’s ire. Dean felt himself being physically tugged back and moved aside as Sam asserted every ounce and fraction of the 30 pounds and 5 inches he had on Dean, inserting himself between Dean and the trickster. “No one gets to call me that but—”

—Dean I know.” The trickster shrugged. “I should have known better. Guess some things never change.” He glanced at the ceiling and added, half to himself, “Apparently not even when higher beings fuck with temporal mechanics with the expressed purpose of changing things.” Looking back at Sam and Dean, he said. “Sorry, but Sam is right. The question is what am I? And that’s both very easy and very... complicated. See I started out as one thing, an angel, well an Archangel, actually, one of four, along with three brothers, but that gig sucked, and eventually, I left. Came to earth, took a vessel... well, not just any vessel, but _my_ vessel, they’re really, really rare. And then we well, stayed together... became something different. The Vikings, they called me Loki. Others called me by different names. I became a demi-god, a trickster. I morphed and changed and evolved until I was everything and everyone I wanted to be... made damn sure folks who were deserving it got their comeuppance and I got a laugh while giving it to them. But see, millennia later and I still can’t escape my past. And that’s what brought me here to you.”

“Angels aren’t real,” Dean protested.

“You spent the last two weeks running from actual demons fresh out of hell after the Greek god of time zapped your grown-up self back into your young adult body so you could have a cosmic do-over and save the universe by consummation your relationship with your soulmate, who just happens to be your brother and who also gets psychic, precognitive visions of death and destruction, and _that’s_ what you lead with? Angels aren’t real?” The trickster/pretend angel shot back.

“Look, our dad—” Dean flinched again just thinking of John.

“—Was intentionally in the dark, thanks in part to your mother, and also you sort of... that’s one of those already happened, hasn’t happened yet, still gonna happen and get smoothed over, wrinkles in these whole time travel shenanigans,” the trickster angel repeated again.

Dean just stared at the man in front of him as if he’d suddenly grown a second head.

The trickster/angel stared back. 

Sam stepped back, turning to Dean. “I think he’s saying that at some point in the future you traveled back in time and you and—Mom—” his voice cracked.

“I know what he’s saying,” Dean answered, his voice low and gentle. “There were angels and something Mom and I did made Dad forget.” Images flashed before his eyes... Sam, dead, bloody, his Dad, impossibly young, talking to him like a sanctimonious prick, taunting Dean with how he’d say “yes” in time how he’d... “Angels are bastards,” he concluded, squeezing Sam’s hand, grounding himself in its warmth, the tangible thump of Sam’s pulse, the security of Sam, real, whole, alive, and still young—too young to be suffering through this—beside him.

“I believe your favorite saying was ‘angel are dicks,’ but that’s the gist of it,” the trickster answered. When Dean and Sam didn’t respond, he continued. “Look you ‘killed’ me with a stake through the heart dipped in the blood of my victims, which you know is the proper method for dispatching a trickster and it didn’t work.”

“I never—” Dean started, but he could feel the truth in it, the echo of a memory, the certainty of the research, the feeling of the stake sliding into the trickster’s chest. It hadn’t happened yet. Wouldn’t happen for a while in the original timeline, but the knowledge was still there.

“You also trapped me in a ring of flaming holy oil and got me to reveal myself as an angel. Hell, Sam there tried damn near everything, including figuring out a surefire way to summon me, before that, and he tried killing me again, and that didn’t work.”

Sam blinked, his eyes going distant for a few seconds before refocusing. When he did, he glared at the trickster, eyes squinted in an angry scowl. “You killed Dean over and over and over again... _you_ fucked with time, torturing me, making me lose him over, and over again—”

Dean’s eyes went wide, flicking back and forth between the smiling _angel_ and Sam, who was looking as pissed off as he did when trying to tear a demon to shreds.

“What?”

“Different kind of time travel, really not the same thing,” the trickster angel offered. “My point is, the information’s all in there.” As he spoke he lifted his hands from the chair’s armrests, the rope that had been binding him just a moment before seeming to evaporate in a shimmer of air as if it had never been there in the first place. His fingers were pointing at Dean’s temple, the implication was clear. “You know it’s true.”

“How did you?” For that matter, how did _Sam_ remember this?

“I think that’s part of the _angel_ thing, Dean,” Sam muttered.

“Actually, that’s more a Loki thing, or a trickster thing,” the trickster offered.

“But you just said you’re—” Sam began to ask.

This time Dean supplied the answer. “He’s both.” And the reality of that statement shimmered in his mind, accompanied by recollections of pain dying, being stuck then coming back and doing it again and again... he was pretty sure he was remembering what Sam had been talking about, and he was almost certain he hadn’t retained those memories the first time through.

“Thank you. But you’ve to realize the big picture here, now that we’re all on the same page. _You’re_ the one who traveled through time. You’re the one whose mumblty-mumble years older’s consciousness with all its baggage got shoved into your younger body and partly locked down. Not Sam. Not your friend Missouri, and definitely not a clown car full of demon-kind. And yet _Sam_ just remembered something that wouldn’t have happened for a couple of years. Are you seeing the problem here? I didn’t time travel with you, and yet I can not only see that it happened and who did it, but I can read the other timeline like an open book.”

“So?” Dean shrugged defensively.

“It means they can see what happened—they can see what we’re changing, what we’re trying to change,” Sam said softly.

“Yes and no, Sam. I’m pretty sure not _all_ of them can see everything, actually I probably can’t see everything, just enough.” The trickster angel said to Sam. To Dean, he added. “You’re Dean Winchester, everyone from here to eternity wants a piece of you, and while you may not be quite famous here and now, trust me, there are still plenty of... entities out there who want you to play a starring role in their apocalyptic play date. You’re walking around like a buffet of secrets and they’d just love to unlock you.”

“Me?” Dean asked, baffled. “Everyone’s after Sam.”

“You’re still so naive it’s almost cute,” the trickster angel said. 

“Hey!” Sam interjected. 

“I’m sorry. It’s just I kind of can’t believe I’m having this opportunity. You’re here, and deeply in love, using your codependency and your soul mate bond to your advantage.”

“Soul mate bond?” Dean asked, lifting one hand to his temple to rub at the growing ache that seemed to be settling in.

The trickster angel raised one eyebrow, nonplussed. “Were you listening to the part about how you’ve got your century or so old psyche is stuffed into your 27-year-old body, but Sam’s multiple centuries of crazy are not?”

“Centuries?” Sam mouthed at Dean, who shook his head.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to figure out what this yahoo was talking about.

“Yes centuries, you’ll figure it out eventually, but my point is Sam is _remembering_ things from his own timeline both as it’s being overwritten and stuff that hasn’t happened yet and wouldn’t have happened for years and years. Those are _his_ memories, not yours. And he shouldn’t be able to do that. And I can see the truth through him... I’m just not sure if anyone else can.”

“I take it that would be a _bad_ thing?” Dean asked wondering how that was somehow worse than everything else that seemed to be happening. 

“Yes, no, maybe?” the angel answered. “It depends on who’s doing the seeing and what they see. Between the two of you, a lot whole lot of our supernatural brethren could figure out a lot of uncomfortable truths. See how they’re being used.”

“Being used?” Sam asked as Dean said, “our?”

“Yes, our, you two didn’t think you were 100% pure earth-grown human, did you?” 

“Well, we’d figured out Sam and demon blood,” Dean started, feeling lost. Sam seemed to twitch at the mention, and the constant burning ache of concern Dean felt for him flared, burning hotter, demanding attention. 

“Let’s just say you two are the result of a lot of angelic and demonic genetic engineering and selective breeding. People on both sides, well multiple sides, needed to make sure the two of you were born at the right time, to the right people with the right traits and qualities and deals in place. As a result, you both play a lot of different roles in various factions’ goals and plans and apocalyptic end games. Of course, the different factions don’t all know about each other, and pretty much no one knows the score—

“What do you mean, no one knows the score?” Sam asked, rubbing his forehead.

Dean glanced over at Sam with growing concern. It had been weeks—no more than a month—since he’d seen Sam looking remotely healthy. But now Sam seemed to carry a constant headache to match Dean’s own. Dean squeezed Sam’s hand in reassurance and waited for the angel to reply.

“I mean no matter what some two-bit demon tries to tell you, there isn’t just one master plan. There are certain demons, Azazel—or ol’ yellow eyes as you may know him—”

Sam’s nostrils flared with his anger as Dean gritted his teeth so hard he thought his jaw might pop.

“Right, well, as I was saying, he’s got one plan. His kids, for lack of a better term, are doing his bidding, but they don’t actually know his end game... Sam plays an integral part in _that_ plan, although he has contingencies in place in case things don’t quite work out the way he planned. As it turns out, his contingencies play directly into some of the other players’ plans.”

“Other demons?” Dean asked.

“Some... A bit higher up the food chain.”

“Ah, we don’t,” Sam began, swallowing hard, “we don’t really know anything about demonic hierarchy.”

“Well, take Lilith, for example. She’s got a plan that requires both of you... of course, she might actually think of you as enemies since she doesn’t know the end game—”

“Of her own plan?” Dean asked, skeptically

“It’s her boss’s plan. And she thinks she knows, but she really doesn’t.” The angel shook his head. “There are other demons who are playing their own parts. They will try to approach Sam, get him to side with them, support them. When they realize what he’s done, that he’s... _killed_ demons on his own, they’ll try to seduce him—”

Sam opened his mouth to interject, but the angel just skewered him with a look.

“With power.”

Sam’s mouth shut faster than it had opened, teeth hitting with an audible click.

“They have... resources. They’ll say they can make you more powerful. Make you better at dispatching demons. They’ll tell you that you need to be strong, to protect yourselves from the angels—”

“Like we’d—” Dean scoffed and started to say.

“They wouldn’t be wrong. You do need strength... just what they’ll over you comes with a price. If you follow it will make it easier for them to manipulate you into fulfilling their pieces of their master’s master plan.

“The angels will come. They have their own plans, wheels within wheels, layers within layers, with even more waiting in the wings. Sam’s true on the demon’s side. The first group’s end game just opens the door for the rest. And the angels want Dean. They will want him to trip and fall and beg. They will try to use his fear, his desire to protect you, Sam, against him. They will try to drive you into the arms of the demons, to make Dean twist and suffer for you, then flagellate him for it, because when he feels guilty, he takes bigger risks, and sometimes he does what he’s told before thinking. They know this. They want this. Everything that has come in your life... every ounce of conflict and suffering from conflict with your father, it was all by their design. They have been manipulating your families generation after generation, pushing all the right buttons in the hope that they’ll get Dean here to jump off a cliff for them. And now that you’ve changed things, now that time is being rewritten, they will be relentless in their pursuit. They will try to use everything you have and everyone you love against you.”

The trickster angel’s voice shifted as he spoke, starting off almost playful, teasing, more like the jovial menace they’d originally believed him to be, but as he spoke, his voice grew harder, stiffer, more serious. By the time he paused to let his words sink in, his features were pinched, pained, and his voice was tinged with sorrow.

“But you’re... you said you’re an angel,” Sam asked, voice catching. “Why are you telling us this? Aren’t you on their side?”

“Because they were...” The angel gulped. They _are_ my family. My brothers tearing each other apart, fighting for the favor of our absent father, who just didn’t care?”

“God?” Dean asked, dumbfounded. Teary angel aside, he wasn’t sure he was about to start believing in something all powerful and good, especially when the dude kinda sounded like a dick. 

“Doesn’t matter. Our father never stopped them. He won’t stop them now. That’s why I got out, ran away, became... someone else.” He shared a meaningful glance with Sam. 

Sam nodded.

Dean couldn’t quite suppress the twinge of betrayal he felt. 

“Don’t go there, Dean, I don’t need to be able to read your original timeline to know it’s shit like that that got us into this mess in the first place,” the angel responded, his tone reprimanding, but also lighter than it had been minutes before. “My point is simple. You think it’s bad now, a half dozen demons on your tail, Azazel out there fucking with babies, burning mothers for attention, a dozen hunters who’ve realized you’re not exactly 100% pure-bred, non-supernatural human, that’s nothing compared to what it will become. You need to be prepared. They will come at you and they won’t all know what the big picture holds. Demons and angels and humans alike are all petty, selfish creatures when it comes down to it.”

“I don’t get it, what do they want?” Sam asked.

“Armageddon,” Dean realized aloud.

“To start,” the angel said.

“What I don’t get?” said Dean as he tried to assimilate the idea that Armageddon could be the _beginning_ of something, “Why are you helping us? Why are you telling us any of this?”

The angel cocked his head to the side and glared at Dean as if Dean was somehow disappointing. “I can see it in you, what happened, and it’s not pretty. It’s everything we wanted to stop. And since what _I_ did the first time around clearly didn’t work, I’m willing to go out on a limb and try something new, like being more up front and playing less hide-the-ball.”

It was Dean’s turn to cock his head skeptically, but beside him, Sam’s eyes had grown wide and he was practically vibrating with excitement.

“Dean, don’t you get it?” Sam asked.

“Get what?”

“He told us before. He said he was an _Archangel_ , not an angel, an Archangel.”

“So?” Dean asked, glancing back and forth between the Archangel and Sam. The Archangel was smiling though, so Dean figured Sam was onto something. 

“The Archangels, they all had specific roles... like Michael, he was the warrior, the sword of God, and Lucifer, well, before he _Fell_ anyway, he was the light bringer.” Sam turned to Dean and smiled. “One of them was the messenger. Like Hermes for the Greek Pantheon, he was the one who appeared to mortals to inform them of God’s plan, let them know what to do, be not afraid, that kind of thing. The Archangel Gabriel, was the messenger of God.” Sam bounced a little on his toes.

Something about seeing Sam that happy, in his element, geeking out, proud, happy, confident... it was so endearing—and so undeniably sexy—it made Dean go a little weak in the knees. If they weren’t still in a semi-hostage situation, Dean would have thrown Sam up against the nearest flat surface and fucked him. As it was, he was almost half-hard just watching.

Besides, it was a relief to see Sam looking so full of life. 

“Don’t you get it, Dean? He’s the Archangel Gabriel. And he’s giving us a message.”

Dean looked back at the angel, Gabriel, who smiled. “Yes, and that’s just the start of the message. If you wanna get through this, there’s a lot more you’re gonna need to hear, and you might not like hearing it.”

So Gabriel told them about vessels and vessels for Archangels, and Lucifer and Michael, about seals and sigils. Every time Dean thought they must be nearing the bottom of the rabbit hole, Gabriel would peel back another layer of the masquerade. Every revelation brought with it a rush of familiarity. It wasn’t as strong as the flashes Dean would see, but as he heard the words, those pieces of his memory, of his other self, seemed to unlock. He knew what Gabriel told them was true. 

“I think I understand what some of the Demons want, but even if we don’t play along, can’t the angels still start breaking seals?” Sam asked, at last.

“It’s possible, but the circumstances necessary for breaking the first seal are so... challenging to orchestrate, it’s not likely.”

“If it was easy, they probably would have started years ago. Then they could have just dropped us into place when they were ready,” Dean mused. 

“What do we do?” asked Sam.

Both Dean and Gabriel turned to look at him. 

“I mean okay, I can just try not to get duped by any demons, angels, or other assorted supernatural minions, I can try not drinking demon blood, I can stay with Dean... It can be us against the world, but how can we _stop_ this? How can we win?”

The “can we win?” didn’t need to be spoken.

“Well, we’re alive for one thing. I’m betting if we can manage to stay that way without any, um, resurrection, that will put a wrench in the works,” Dean mused.

Sam just stared all the more expectantly at Gabriel.

“Don’t look at me, kid. No one’s figured it out before. I’m guessing that’s a big part of what Kronos was trying to do with you... create a situation where you _could_ figure it out.”

Sam deflated at that, every shadow and bruise from the last month standing out stark on his face. 

Dean realized that while hope and curiosity had been building in him as memories and truths clicked into place, Sam was being crushed under the weight of the news, sagging at the prospect of having to fight himself and everyone else in the universe... Dean could see it. For a moment he was seeing through Sam’s eyes, feeling the burdens stack up and slot into place—temptation and fear and pressure stretching to the infinite horizon, unending. Even if he survived and stayed strong and didn’t give in every day of his life, as soon as he died, he’d be at their mercy, facing eternal temptation, manipulation. It was untenable. Impossible. And it terrified him to the core, banished reason from his mind, leaving behind nothing but a hollow void encircled in anguish and pain.

Sam wavered, eyes rolling back in his head, and started to collapse. 

“No, Sam! No!” Dean said as he caught Sam in his arms. “It’s not like that. It won’t be like that. You’re not alone this time. I promise. Whatever happens, I’m with you.” He was kneeling now, Sam’s semi-conscious self clutched to his chest. “No matter what. Even if Dad disowns me, I’m with you,” he added, whispering in Sam’s ear. 

Sam rallied at that, the faintness and confusion sliding away. “Thank you,” he murmured, “But I don’t know if I can physically keep this up.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Gabriel offered.

~~~

**Epilogue**

Three names. 

The list Gabriel had given them bore three names. A teenage boy, a man, and a younger woman. 

“Go to them. Seek them out. You need them and they need you.”

“Who are they?” Sam had asked, as Dean looked at each name, shivers of _something_ running up and down his spine.

“Three people who will suffer unnecessarily if you don’t get to them first. Two people who could become pawns in the war, turned or used against you. One who could be your greatest ally?”

_Jimmy Novak_

_Adam Milligan_

_Charlie Bradbury_

“What will happen to them if we don’t—” Sam asked.

“Jimmy and Adam are like us… Adam’s _really_ like us,” Dean remembered. 

“And they need us?” Sam asked dubiously, even as they were pulling up to the Milligan residence.

“And we need them,” Dean confirmed.

Gabriel had said it wasn’t a certain thing. After all, none of them knew what _would_ work. It wasn’t every day you got to actually change history, avert the apocalypse. Still… every chance they could get on their side.

“Why do I have a feeling this is going to really piss off the angels?” Sam asked.

“‘Cause it is. Also, I’m pretty sure this is going on the list of things Dad is going to be royally pissed at us about. And you’re probably going to be pissed at him too,” Dean added, smiling to himself.

“Do I wanna know?” Sam asked.

He just smiled out of the corner of his mouth and ran up the steps. Three wraps on the door knocker, one quick press of the bell. 

A kid, dirty blonde and way too young, opened the door a few inches, sticking his head out of the crack and looking around. “Hello, can I help you?”

“Adam Milligan?” Sam asked, from where he was standing still a half-dozen yards down the walkway.

“Yeah,” Adam said, sounding confused.

“We’re Sam and Dean, uh—” Sam turned to Dean, suddenly looking lost.

But Dean knew what to say. After all, it wasn’t every day you got a second chance to meet the family you never knew you’d had. “Winchester,” he said with a smile.

Adam’s eyebrows shot to his forehead. 

“Yeah, we’re your brothers and it’s a very, very long story,” Dean continued.

Sam stepped forward and slipped his hand into Dean’s, presenting a united front.

Adam cocked his head to the side, looking positively confused now.

“It’s a long story,” Sam reassured. 

“How would you like to help us save the world?” Dean asked.

“Wait—you’re _serious_ aren’t you?” Adam answered.

Sam and Dean just nodded, together.

“Count me in,” came Adam’s reply.

Dean smiled, and for a moment, he could see his older self, smiling back at him, giving a nod of approval. 

Dean might not know what the future held, but he had a chance to make it better, and he wasn’t going to let that chance slip by. He was gonna fight, and together they were going to win. Maybe all it took was a little faith, a lot of love, and some friends. Together, they could make it happen. They _would_ make it happen.

Across from him, the mirage shimmered away, leaving Dean standing with his lover and his brother and a newfound understanding of what the future would hold. Through it all, he would guide himself, the echo of what would have been revealing itself, an afterimage.

_The End?_  


**Author's Note:**

> After 8 years of writing for bigbangs of various descriptions, I am still trying to figure out how to pace and plot a 20,000-word story. I can write drabbles, double drabbles, one-shots, and vignettes just fine, and I have no problem writing novellas and novels of pretty much any length (every idea I have tries to turn itself into a 40k-word novella or a 100k+ novel). This was an experiment in trying to fit my writing style to something in the ballpark of 20,000 words (long enough for the bigbang, but short enough for me to finish it with the multitude of real-life demands on my time). I am still not sure I have the pacing and flow down, but after many returns to the drawing board and rewrites and plot holes, this is the finished product! I have continued to tinker with it since getting the last draft back from my beta, so if you see something fishy, please don't blame him. All remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> So, after all that, thank you so much for reading!


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